Capitol Nights
by Woodspurge
Summary: This is a very dark story about how far Haymitch will go to protect those he decides he's responsible for.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own none of the recognizable elements of this story, and I make no financial gain from it.

Author's Note: This story will earn its M rating in later chapters. It's not intended for kids.

**Capitol Nights**

He'd hoped it might be different with them. He'd never _thought_ it might be different, for he'd lived through far too much to be that naïve. But more and more, as their competitors died and it looked like they might actually make it to the end, hope had come to torment him. When they'd been declared Victors- both of them! - the wild elation he'd felt had lasted a good two hours before dreadful hope stole back in, now desperate and panic-touched. _At least they're alive_, he'd told himself constantly. It became his silent mantra: _At least they're alive._

Of course, it wasn't different for them. Nor did Snow wait long to spring his trap. Two weeks was their grace period, the same amount of time he himself had once been given before a different trap had snapped what was left of his life into useless shards.

Now here they were in his house, holding hands, the boy very pale and the girl actually _crying_. And why waste time? Let's have done with this.

"You two have had a visit from Snow."

"Haymitch, he- you wouldn't believe- the _dirty_ old-" Katniss can't seem to get a complete sentence out, so great is her shock and unhappiness.

Peeta squeezes her hand, murmurs, "Hush." To Haymitch he speaks in a grimly determined voice. "Snow wants to prostitute us in the Capitol." He stops, flustered, humiliated and scared, but trying to be strong for the girl's sake. Haymitch quietly waits for the second part of it, realizes Peeta can't bring himself to say it.

So he nods and says, "And- he threatened to kill your families if you don't cooperate."

"How did you know?" Peeta's eyes widen and he takes a small step forward. Haymitch remembers why it has always been so hard not to give a damn about this boy. "Did he do this to you, too?"

"No. My family was killed because I outsmarted the Capitol during my Games. I embarrassed them, and two weeks later my mother, my little brother, and my girl were all dead." He rubs his hands together briskly to indicate how quick and easy this bit of revenge, punishment, discipline had been for Snow. _Over-done-with-gone_. He had thought at first that Snow had killed him, too, and reflects with dull horror that being a ghost feels like not being able to move or breathe as your insides begin to rot. "What you need to take from that is that Snow doesn't make idle threats. He _will_ kill them if you don't do what he wants."

"So what are we going to do?" Peeta looks at him as though he might have some brilliant idea that will get them out of this snare. It's funny, in a bleak way. He supposes he has given them some cause to expect brilliant ideas, or at least clever improvisations. And Peeta's been an optimist from the first day they met.

Katniss, his fellow pragmatist, saves him from having to say it. "We do what he wants," she says miserably. "What else can we do? He'll kill _Prim_."

So, that's it then. He takes a drink and regards them over his bottle: fiery, stubborn, brave Katniss; and responsible, caring, idealistic Peeta. He imagines Peeta living in an apartment in the Capitol for most of each year, entertaining wealthy men and women Snow sends to him, smiling and likeable and courtly because that's the persona Haymitch has helped him create; meanwhile learning that people only want one thing from him. Eventually, he'll learn that he is only good for one thing.

And Katniss- well, she will become just like her former Mentor, who it turns out still hasn't ever been able to save anyone. Had he really thought he could?

"There might be one thing I could do," he says.

"Really?" Katniss asks, wiping her eyes and leaning forward a bit.

"What?" Peeta asks at the same time, sounding so _hopeful_, like he'd just _known_ Haymitch would come up with something.

Haymitch hesitates then, because his idea seems impossibly weak in the face of such hope, and it's a horrible idea, but it's all he has left. "Want a drink, sweetheart?" he asks, offering Katniss his bottle.

Katniss looks like she is considering it, stalling just as much as he is. She doesn't know what his idea is, but she doesn't dare let herself believe that it will save them. Not this time. She reaches out and takes the bottle from him, takes a swig and hands it back, wincing at the burn. Peeta bounces a disapproving look from one of them to the other, but doesn't say anything. Haymitch smiles at the teenage-girl-turned-murderer standing in his living room, and raises a questioning eyebrow at Peeta. The boy shakes his head impatiently, of _course_, but it would have been bad manners not to offer. Effie would be so _proud_ of him, he thinks sardonically.

"I'm going to try something. I know people in the Capitol. I'll try to go there and talk to them. It probably won't work. You two should… prepare yourselves, I guess." That's as much as he's going to tell them. If this works, let them think that he's just that good at persuading people. Let them think that forever.

He perches on the edge of a darkly shining wood chair with a cushioned seat and back covered in green velvet, and from that vantage point he looks nervously around himself. There are three conversation groupings of similar chairs around low coffee tables. All of the other chairs are empty. There's a table against the wall with a silver pot of coffee, cut crystal decanters of various liquors, a plate of fruit pieces speared with toothpicks (each toothpick has a colorful foil fringe on the end), and no less than three large platters of pastries. All of this at 9am on a Thursday morning. Haymitch keeps expecting a delegation of Capitolites in sequined business suits to descend upon the anteroom.

Maybe then he could slip away unnoticed and forget this idea ever occurred to him. He badly wants to get himself a drink, but even more he wants to just kind of sink into the floor and rematerialize a safe distance away from the creature in the next room. Like maybe back in his house in Twelve.

The door opens, and even though he was expecting it he startles so violently that he nearly falls out of the chair. Gods, he doesn't want to go in there. He takes a couple of deep breaths and stands up. Halfway across the room he realizes he's heading for the liquor and has to redirect his steps to the door, which still stands mockingly open.

He steps in, crossing the threshold with an atavistic little shiver. Already he can smell the sick-sweet bouquet of Snow's cologne. It's the same cologne he was wearing twenty-four years ago, and it still smells like blood to Haymitch. It smells like his family's blood, like an unfinished rough wood floor soaked with blood and-

"Close the door," a voice commands.

Haymitch grasps the doorknob in a shaking hand and inadvertently slams it shut, cringing at the loud bang. "Ah, fuck," he mutters. Blood and gunshots and the old monster, smiling a knowing smile at him.

"Do have a seat, my boy," Snow says jovially. "We have things to talk about."

And so Haymitch comes forward and sits and feels roiling hate and black, all-consuming despair.

Snow looks at him shrewdly. "My boy, the people you've worked yourself into such a state over have been dead for twenty-four years. Does that help?"

Bizarrely, it does. He nods and swallows thickly. "I'm here about Katniss and Peeta."

"You've come to offer me your tail in place of theirs."

Has he? Is that really what he's doing here?

Snow nods as though Haymitch had confirmed it. "An intriguing offer. You've always been a clever boy. So- enlighten me: why would my Capitolites want to bed a forty year old drunk when they could have two fresh, pretty teenagers?"

"They want sensationalism," Haymitch replies. He's had a lot of time to think about that question, and this is the one angle that might work. "They want a sappy love story. They want to gawk at those two kids like they're animals in a cage and collectively coo every time they kiss."

"Yes, you're a clever boy," Snow says musingly. "I had considered that, of course. You're a bit long in the tooth, but you look decent enough when you're cleaned up. How about a threesome, hmm? You and Katniss and Peeta. Now that would be sensationalism, wouldn't you say? And just imagine the interviews I could make each of you give."

_Shit_. "They're just kids. I'm the same age as Katniss's _mother_."

"And yet, I could make you do it. I could make them do it. Do you believe that, my boy?"

"Yes." He doesn't believe it, actually. He's pretty sure there's nothing the old devil could do that would persuade him to do _that_ with either of the kids. But he's not fool enough to invite Snow to try.

Snow looks mildly disappointed at his response. "Alright then, Haymitch. I accept your offer, for now. You will do everything the client asks. You will be perfectly compliant. If even one client complains about you, Katniss or Peeta will be making it up to them. Do you understand?"

Haymitch nods automatically, as he would to any command given by an all-powerful sociopath sitting less than five feet away from him. He's stunned, and he feels a sudden, panicky urge to call his words back. He hadn't meant it, right? It's clearly a horrible idea. Why the hell should it have to be him, anyway?

Get a grip, you damn coward. It's only sex. And you're hardly a virgin. So just get a grip.

"Our business is concluded. Wait in the anteroom, and someone will be along to take you to your new quarters and explain how everything works."

The last is said with a slightly suggestive tone and a cruel, condescending smile. Haymitch feels no urge to rise to the bait. Snow is gesturing to the door, and he gets up and leaves quickly. True, he backs out so he can keep an eye on Snow. Anyone would. Anyone who had smelled the blood and heard the words 'kill the girl' over and over for twenty-four years would.


	2. Miss Lilac

Author's Note: This chapter is rated M. It's dark and harsh and disturbing. There will be non-con and there will be torture. If you're too young for that stuff, please do not read this chapter.

Note 2: If this story gets removed I will probably post it to . For now, I'd rather avoid that site because it is plagued with PWPs and I think that's what most readers are looking for when they go there.

Finally, thanks go out to my first reviewer. I hope the story stays interesting. And michelle2662, thanks for the follow.

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 2**

The car comes to a smooth stop in front of the Lovely Baltic, one of the super-posh hotels this section of the Capitol is known for. There it sits, idling silently, an elongated capsule of neon yellow. If it seems to have no conception of its own tackiness, that's probably because it's awestruck by the strawberry shaped monstrosity of the Lovely Baltic looming over it. Hidden for the moment in the car's backseat, Haymitch laughs, because what else can he do?

His fingers roam restlessly over the small box in his lap. It is the size of a gift box that would hold an expensive pen, and is covered in black crushed velvet. The inside is lined in black silk. Held in the center, in its _bed of silk_, is a three cc. syringe half-filled with pink liquid and ending in a capped needle.

He had been instructed on how to use this (push needle into thigh and slowly depress plunger) and on when to use it (not when the client is watching). He had been told he would 'see results' in no more than two minutes. It's 'pretty potent stuff, ha-ha'. Did he want to try it before his rendezvous, to get acquainted with how it felt? He'd declined, and they hadn't pushed him.

"You probably won't even need it. She's a hot little number! You got a good one to start with," the fool had said with a knowing wink.

The car door is opened by the uniformed driver. "Here we are, Mr. Abernathy. Room 410. Your appointment is in ten minutes. I will return for you in three hours and ten minutes."

Haymitch climbs out of the car, trying to remember the last time someone called him 'Mr. Abernathy'. He thinks the last person to do so might have been his schoolteacher, back before the Games. That kid- healthy, not addicted, with a family and a girlfriend and one or two other boys that he could claim as casual friends- had had no idea that he only had a few weeks left to exist. This is the wreckage, baby.

Getting back to the point, it occurs to him that in a way the Capitol driver in his natty uniform has just given him a new name. He looks up at the hotel's magenta façade and ponders being dressed up in gaudy clothes and renamed on such a day as this.

The car pulls away from the curb as he tucks the velvet case into the inner pocket of his jacket, the same pocket he usually keeps a flask in. All he's had so far today is a single shot of rum and a dose of Ciprolen to dull the cravings. That's all he'd been allowed to have. With a sigh, he squares his shoulders and walks into the lobby, telling himself it's likely not going to be as bad as he fears. He's already decided that he will forget the fact that this woman has paid Snow a hefty sum for what is about to happen. He'll treat it as just a bit of casual, meaningless sex with a moderately attractive partner whose name he'll forget; no big deal, I almost always do this once or twice during my annual sojourns the city.

He takes the elevator to the fourth floor and finds the room. He debates the merits of finding a semi-private alcove to inject the pink stuff before knocking on the door. Sooner begun, sooner done, after all. Before he can decide, the door flies open.

"Come in, darling, come in! Welcome!" His appointment enthuses.

She has light purple hair that falls in ringlets all the way down to her ankles. Little purple flowers are woven all through it. Her skin is painted and powdered to the same ghostly shade Effie usually affects. Her eyes are a bright, unnatural purple, as are her lips. She has a bumblebee tattooed on the left side of her face, just below her eye, and it seems to be inset with black and yellow gems. All this, and she's wearing nothing except a diaphanous purple robe over a glimmering purple bikini.

He realizes he is still rooted in the doorway, staring. "Yikes," he says.

She bats her eyes at him. "You like?"

In lieu of answering this question (and it's probably rhetorical anyway, he reassures himself) he takes two steps forward into the room and closes the door.

"You don't say much, do you?" the woman pouts.

"Sorry. Just- startled." Haymitch is trying to figure out how he's going to get a private moment to inject himself. Pretending that he has _chosen_ to sleep with this woman isn't going to work, not by a long shot. He wonders if her bush will be lilac-colored, and winces.

"My, you're a rustic one. I guess it comes from living out in the boonies." Her voice is playful and flirtatious again, and she reaches up to caress his cheek. The pad of her thumb runs lightly over his lips, and he smells lilacs. "Don't worry, honey. I'll teach you all you need to know. I do a lot of first-timers."

She stands on tiptoe and kisses him. He knows what to do with _that_, of course, and kisses her back with as much feeling as he can muster. She presses up against him as they kiss, undulating softly. He is surprised to feel himself responding, and then not surprised at all. If he has to do this, he might as well enjoy it.

She pulls away just long enough to shrug out of her robe, and then her hands are undoing the buttons of his trousers. "Lose the jacket, honey."

He takes it off and drops it indifferently as she pushes his trousers and underwear down. Stepping out of them, he begins to unbutton his shirt of wine-colored silk before she can do it.

"Leave the shirt on for now. The color suits you." Stepping back and looking into his eyes, she takes off her bra. Her breasts are as ivory-pale as the rest of her, but they're also full and perky.

"You're staring again," she teases.

"Shouldn't I be?" he drawls, not looking away. She wants him to stare, and they both know it. "Very nice, Miss Lilac."

She smiles coyly. "Thank you, darling." She reaches down and wraps her hand around his erection. "Let us go to bed. Come, come!" She leads him to the bed, keeping hold of him.

They fall on the bed and kiss again as she runs her fingers through his hair. Every woman he's ever taken to bed has wanted to play with his hair. Every one of them has also been a Capitolite. Haymitch firmly believes that their fixation on his hair is a control thing, a way of reveling in their supposed superiority. His hair is the only modification he'd had to endure; straight golden blond hair was 'fierce', and the dark wavy hair that was natural for him was 'just so _twelve_'. They hadn't just dyed his hair- they'd somehow altered him so that all of his hair _grew in_ blond. When that used to make him angry, he'd only had to think about facial tattoos and implanted jewels to remind himself that hair color didn't really matter. And of course, he'd gotten used to it.

Miss Lilac twirls a bit of it around her finger. In a more normal situation, he'd gently remove her hand and get her mind on something more _diverting_. He's used to it, but enough is enough. This time he thinks better of it, though.

"Like sunlight on a summer evening," she murmurs approvingly.

He strokes her hair in turn, mimicking her gesture. "And yours is the twilight." He feels that he has gotten into the groove of this very easily, and this won't be bad at all while they're doing it. And later, at the apartment, there'll be liquor.

She shimmies out of her panties and tosses them away with a flourish. "Do it to me, honey."

"As you like, Miss Lilac," he acquiesces. He straddles her, bracing his hands on either side of her shoulders.

"Oh, honey, call me Maysilee while you're making love to me."

He freezes. "Your name is Maysilee?"

"It is tonight. Come on, honey, I'm ready."

"That's-" He breaks off, catching himself barely in time. _That's sick_, he finishes mentally. There is a roaring in his ears. He can't do this. Literally, he can't do this. But if he doesn't…

"Just a minute," he snaps, getting off her and heading for his discarded jacket.

"What _is_ it?" she whines impatiently, pushing herself up on her elbows.

He keeps his back to her, crouching next to his jacket. Blocking what he's doing, he draws the case from the pocket. "Quick drink. I want this to be _fabulous_, and I get the shakes if I don't have a drink every so often." He can't help putting a sarcastic over-emphasis on 'fabulous', but it will probably sail right over her ridiculous purple head anyway.

"Oh! Yes, of course," she says, sounding cheerful again. "Have all you want, honey. I _was_ expecting you to be a little more buzzed when you arrived." She giggles.

He swallows back the reply he wants to make and stabs the needle into his thigh. After returning the used syringe to the case and tucking the whole shebang into the hidden pocket, he returns to the bed with a slightly feral smile.

"Oh, you're not hard anymore," she pouts.

"Don't you worry about that, my Lilac. I will be."

"Call me Maysilee."

_I'm doing this for Katniss and Peeta_, he reminds himself. He has to protect them. And what does it matter, anyway? He's only about two and a half hours away from drinking himself into oblivion, and then it won't matter at all.

"Alright, Maysilee." He climbs on top of her again, starts to kiss her purple mouth, and then jerks back with a sharp gasp. All at once, he is fully erect again and more intensely aroused than he can ever remember being before. He is panting, the urge to enter her almost unbearable.

"Are you ready… Maysilee?" he asks.

"Oh, Haymitch, I've been ready for twenty-four years. Ever since I first met you. _Take_ me, honey."

_Sicko_, he thinks, but the thought seems distant and unimportant, nearly drowned out by his intense need. He slides into her with a groan. She cries out and wraps her legs around him. "Say my name!"

"Maysilee," he says as he moves in her. "Oh, Maysilee!"

"Yes, Haymitch, yes!"

They roll around, take turns being on top, go slowly and evenly, go fast and frenetically. It goes on and on. He begins to wonder if he's going to be able to cum at all. Every time he feels near the edge, the feeling plateaus and then recedes before slowly building again.

"Oh, Haymitch, you're a fabulous beast!" she cries out with her second orgasm.

"Yeah, Maysilee- you're pretty great, too," he says breathlessly, and she laughs.

On it goes, and what if the three hours is up before he manages to cum? Surely this can't last that long, can it?

Finally, _finally_, he finishes, ejaculating almost painfully inside her as she shrieks through her fourth orgasm. She grabs him tightly and demands, "Tell me you love me, Haymitch."

Knowing what she wants, he says, "I love you, Maysilee."

She kisses him again and then lets him go. He rolls off her and lies flat on his back, catching his breath.

"What time is it?" she asks sleepily. She sits up to look across him at the clock. "Oh bother!" she declares in a surprised, put-out, and generally more wakeful tone. "We've only got twenty minutes left! Oh, _why_ aren't you available for entire nights?"

"I wake up violent," he answers, too weary to care about her knowing something that personal.

"Well, I guess that's a good reason. Come here and hold me for a few minutes before you get dressed. Take off your shirt first."

He sits up, feeling a brief swoop of dizziness at the sudden movement, and takes off his shirt while she watches him. "Now come here," she says. "You've earned rest."

"Okay, Maysilee. Shit. Lilac, I mean. What _is_ your name, anyway?"

"After _that_, anything you want it to be." She laughs, wrapping her arms around him.

"Miss Lilac, then. Suits you," he mumbles. _Empty and mindless; a stupid, frivolous name for a stupid, frivolous person_. He wraps his arms around her and wishes that the clock was on her side of the bed so he could watch the minutes pass.

He is actually drifting off when the gold bracelet on his wrist emits a soft chime. And even though he wasn't really asleep, his breath catches and his heart is suddenly racing. It will even out in a couple of minutes. This is another thing he has gotten used to.

"Gotta go, Lilac," he says brusquely, getting up and gathering his clothes.

"Bye! Until next time!" She blows him a kiss and then lies back with a pretty little yawn.

He dresses and leaves, patting his jacket to make sure he has the case with the syringe.

His driver is waiting at the curb and holds open the door of the canary-mobile for him. "Home, Jeeves," Haymitch says in his best snarky tone, just to spread the good feelings around a bit. The driver's face wrinkles into a moue of distaste, but he doesn't say anything. Feeling a little better, Haymitch gets in.

There is another man sitting on the wide bench seat.

"Hello, Haymitch! So, did you have fun?"

Haymitch bears his teeth in a humorless grin. "I've seen better times, but who has not? And, who are you?"

"I'm Balthamos, your attendant."

"What does that mean?"

"My job is to escort you back to your apartment and check you over- make sure you performed and that you aren't damaged, you know. I can even administer a bit of first aid if you need it, ha-ha, wink-wink." And he winks twice.

Haymitch is starting to believe that Effie is quite sensible and even likeable, relative to everyone else in the Capitol. "Tempting as that all sounds, I'm fine. And I did everything that woman wanted."

"Splendid, splendid! I've still got to check you, my friend, but that'll make things much easier, you know."

"Not your friend," Haymitch says, and turns away to stare moodily out the tinted window. After a few minutes spent in silence, he turns back. "That stuff in the syringe is too strong. You need to give me a less potent version if that's how I'm supposed to _perform_ for these freaks."

"Oh?" Balthamos asks in apparent surprise. He leans forward, and before Haymitch has any idea what he's doing his hand is between the blonds' legs. He takes a quick grope and is withdrawing his hand before Haymitch recovers from his shock.

"Keep your fucking hands to yourself! Shit! Don't fucking touch me!" he barks, breathing too hard.

Balthamos actually has the gall to make an exasperated _tsk-tsk_ sound. "You're not hard now, so you must have been able to finish while you were with the lady. Whyever do you think you need a lighter dose?"

Haymitch stares at him, trying to pour all his rage and hatred into the look. "Don't. Touch. Me."

Balthamos smiles encouragingly, and raises his eyebrows to indicate that he is still waiting for the answer to his question.

"It took more than _two hours_."

"And your companion paid for three hours total. So the booster did exactly as much as it was intended to do. We're really very good at calculating these things."

Haymitch turns back to the window without another word. He begins trying not to think about anything. "Can I have liquor when I get back to the apartment?" he mutters, hating himself for having to ask permission from this odious man.

"After I check you over you can have your nightly ration. Look, here we are now!"

The car comes to a stop, and a moment later the driver opens the door. Haymitch climbs out and follows Balthamos into the building. His apartment is on the twentieth floor. The elevator carries them there in less than thirty seconds, every bit as ruthlessly efficient as the ones in the Tribute building. Once they get there, Balthamos pulls out two keys. He offers one to Haymitch and tucks the other back into his pocket, having produced it solely to show Haymitch that he had one.

"Would you care to do the honors?" Balthamos asks with a grandiose gesture towards the door. Haymitch slants him a disdainful look and unlocks the apartment. They make their way into the living room.

"Alright, Haymitch, take off your clothes and we'll get you checked over."

"I'm fine," Haymitch says, but his tone is resigned. This is going to happen; it doesn't take him any more than one look at this smarmy little idiot to see that.

"Now, now, don't be difficult," Balthamos chides. "There, that's better!" he declares happily as Haymitch begins undressing.

Once Haymitch stands naked in front of him, Balthamos walks a slow circle around him. "I'm going to touch you now just to be sure you aren't hurt."

"Bullshit," Haymitch mutters.

Balthamos goes on as though he hadn't heard. "If you hold still it will be quick and painless. If you are uncooperative, you will be disciplined. Sound fair?"

"We can discuss 'fair' after _you've_ spent two hours fucking a perverted freak."

Balthamos doesn't answer except to put his hands on Haymitch's shoulders. He runs his hands down both sides of both arms, over Haymitch's chest and abdomen, down his sides, all over his back, and down each leg. "No bruises anywhere, good." Then his finger is at Haymitch's anus. Haymitch jerks away with a snarl.

"Keep your filthy hands off me."

"Okay, Haymitch. Just remember that you brought this on yourself." He touches a button on the cuff at his wrist. And they must have been waiting just down the hall, because less than a minute later three men let themselves into the apartment. They go for Haymitch immediately, and two of them grab his arms and force them behind his back. The third hurries to snap cuffs on his wrists.

"Get against the wall. Face the wall," one of them orders harshly.

Haymitch braces himself as well as he can. Clearly they are going to beat him with something. "Four of you, with weapons, and you still have to cuff me? Cowards. You know why you got called in, boys? Because I wouldn't let your perverted friend get his rocks off." He almost manages to twist free, but it isn't enough. Then he feels something hard and cold press against his anus again, feels it push slowly into him. He takes a ragged breath. At least it's not a cock, too cold and too narrow. At least they aren't actually raping him.

Then terrible, blinding, all-encompassing pain courses through him. His whole body convulses, his head knocking sharply against the wall. If they hadn't still been holding his arms, he would have collapsed. He grays out for a few seconds, and then his vision comes back dark and hazy. He retches, and vomit that's mostly bile dribbles down his chin.

"Give him another jolt," someone says.

The agony floods him again and he screams, feet lifting off the floor as his toes curl reflexively. Urine splashes down his legs onto the floor. He falls limp in the guards' grasp, harsh sobs taking the place of his screams.

"Alright, set him down."

They lower him to the floor by his arms, and as soon as they let go he curls onto his side. Between the sobs and the dry heaving, he can barely breathe.

"That was the shock wand, Haymitch. Be good and you won't ever have to feel that again. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Haymitch chokes out. Everything still hurts badly, but it's just beginning to dull enough for him to notice specific areas of pain. He feels like he has been torn apart inside, where they shoved the wand. He can't even tell if it's still in him or not. The thought that it might be fills him with sick terror.

"Are you ready for me to remove the cuffs, Haymitch?"

"Yes," he says. _Please._

Balthamos moves around behind him. As soon as his wrists are free he pulls his arms up against his chest.

"Now I'm going to put my finger inside you. I don't have to give you explanations or reasons for anything I do- waste of my time, you know. But, in the spirit of fostering a healthy working relationship between us, this isn't about sexual gratification. See, in and out that quick. I just checked you for bleeding."

Haymitch hadn't even felt it around the residual pain. But it means the wand isn't in him anymore, at least. He relaxes and immediately wishes he hadn't as painful tremors start up in his muscles.

"The pain will wear off in fifteen or twenty minutes. Do you want help cleaning yourself up?" Balthamos asks solicitously.

"_No_," Haymitch replies vehemently.

"Well then, adieu until tomorrow."

Haymitch watches them leave, forcing his eyes to stay open until they're gone. Then he lets the hateful world go dark.


	3. Night Off

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

A.N.: Thanks, Michelle! Here it is, then.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 3**

This is one of the quieter bars, dimly lit and very red. Most of the lighting is red. So are the booths, the tabletops, the counters. Quiet but violent-sounding music fills the air, covering the background drone of conversations. The place is only about half full, most of the bar crowd preferring the trendier spots a few streets over. It used to be one of his regular haunts. He sits in a booth in the corner nearest the door, twisting the gold cuff around his wrist and staring at the tabletop. He is trying not to think about anything, hunched over against the wall. He had walked all the way here from the Cell with his eyes on the sidewalk and now he stares at the table only because it happens to be hiding the floor.

"Can I get you anything, honey?" a female voice asks close by, and he grimaces at the condescending, mocking appellation. It shows, then. Anyone can see what has happened to him in the last few days, and what he has done.

"Another whiskey," he says without looking up.

"Coming right up."

He listens to her footsteps as she walks away and whispers to himself, "Not your honey." But she can't hear him and who is he kidding anyway? He fucks (or is fucked by) anyone they send him to. He swallows a couple of times and bites his lip angrily. "Whore. Call it what it is," he hisses at himself, and then pushes further into the corner. He shouldn't have come here. He should have stayed in the Cell. _Stupid_ whore.

"The Cell" is how he thinks of the Capitol apartment where he will be kept for the foreseeable future whenever he isn't in use. Six rooms and a balcony, all decorated and furnished in generic Capitol gaudy. There's the bedroom, with the silk sheets and profusion of gold-framed mirrors he now knows to be ubiquitous in the Capitol; a fitness room with a selection of exercise machines; a bathroom in which every toiletry from shampoo to shaving cream is cinnamon scented; a kitchen, to which his meals and his daily ration of liquor are delivered; a dressing room full of fashionable clothes because Capitolites like to dress their pets up; and the Game room. _They_ call it the living room, but it was there that the rules of this new phase of the Game were explained to him. It was there that they _played_. Sometimes he thinks of it as the Wand Room.

He feels sick with disgust and shame. Lines from an old poem keep swimming across his consciousness. _Oh yes, I am poisoned; Mother, make my bed soon; For I'm sick at the heart and I fain would lie down._ He had been made to eat before he left. He had had to sit in the Game room in front of the screen and eat every bite of the meal that had been prepared for him. This was his warning after skipping the previous two meals. Every single bite, to show that they owned him, that he was utterly under their control. And he had done it. He wishes he could throw up, but it isn't that kind of sick.

The gold cuff will chime when he has thirty minutes left to get back. This is his night off, as long as he obeys his curfew. He doesn't actually know what time curfew is, or how long he has left- longer than thirty minutes, at least. A night off means that he can get drunk- if he has enough time, and if the waitress ever bothers to bring his drink.

"Mitch, my old friend!" He is startled into looking up, and there is Chaff smiling down at him.

"Please just go away," he says tightly, and is humiliated to find himself blinking back tears.

Chaff raises an eyebrow, affecting not to notice. "After searching through five bars to find you? You jest." He swings himself lithely onto the bench across from Haymitch. "So, they finally got you, huh?"

"Oh, screw you, Chaff," Haymitch mutters.

"Little brother, you know me better than that. I'm not gloating, I'm mourning." He flashes his humorous grin. "That said, you're going to have to man up if you want the whiskey."

This is an inside joke between them, with a history as long as their friendship. And with perfect timing, the waitress arrives and sets his drink in front of him. Quick as a flash, Chaff snatches it. Haymitch lets him, playing along. "Hey, _hand_ off!" he emphasizes the singular.

Chaff holds the glass tauntingly. _Man up_, he mouths, raising his eyebrows. Haymitch nods, feigning exasperated surrender, and is rewarded by getting the glass back.

"And a whiskey for you, sir?" the waitress asks, smiling gamely.

"Gin and tonic, my dear lady," Chaff says, with comically overdone chivalry. She nods, tells him it's coming right up, and heads off.

"She called _me_ 'honey'," Haymitch admits, eyeing her speculatively as she walks away. He turns haunted grey eyes back to Chaff. "It's that obvious, isn't it?"

"Oh, is _that_ what you were all pissy about when I found you? That's _so you_, Mitch- as surly as an old junkyard cur, and about as charming. Only you would get all worked up over a pretty little thing like that calling you honey."

"While you're so sought after that District 11 has banished you to the Capitol."

"Only for one week a month. That's usual. Different Victors available each week, but always a variety to choose from." He gestures open-handed. _Gosh, isn't the Capitol thoughtful?_

Dismayed, Haymitch asks, "They're _still_ doing it to you?"

Chaff nods firmly, holding Haymitch's eyes. "Yes. Not as much as they used to, but yes. By the time you've been in it for a few years it's mostly regulars, very few surprises." He pauses, considering what to say carefully. "It gets _bearable_, Mitch. You'll be surprised how quickly it gets bearable."

"Oh, I doubt that." He takes a few gulps to steady himself. He _will not _cry in front of Chaff. After a moment, he says bleakly, "Just tell me, is everyone in the Capitol so _sick_?"

"You're talking about wealthy aristocrats who unwind by screwing district slaves." For a moment the humorous façade slips as Chaff looks around the bar, eyes dark and brooding. "It's easy enough to guess how they caught you. But, damn it, Mitch, I thought you told me you were never going to _have_ kids."

"It's not like that. It's not like that _at all_. If I'm any relation to those kids, I'm the fucked up uncle everyone hopes will forget the date of the get-together."

"And yet, here you are," Chaff says, almost accusingly.

Haymitch doesn't reply, doesn't even shrug.

"Are they worth it?"

"I don't know. But, they _have_ to be. Shit, they're all that's left." His voice takes on a note of steel that draws a slight approving nod from his companion. He doesn't notice. "Better me than them. They still might be able to do something, if the Capitol doesn't destroy them first. What can I do? What have I ever been able to do?"

"Well, you surprise me. And here I thought the only good traits I could attribute to my best friend were mulish stubbornness, animal cleverness, and a prodigious ability to hold his liquor."

"Alas, poor Chaff. So classy, and condemned to associate with such rabble."

A soft, musical chime sounds, and both of them look at the golden cuff. Haymitch gulps down the remainder of his drink and throws some money on the table. "See you around?" There's the smallest hint of desperation in the question.

"Not for a while, little brother. I go back to 11 the day after tomorrow. Cashmere's in town, but I doubt you're that desperate for company." He stands up and the two men embrace. "Be strong," Chaff mutters before they separate.

Haymitch mouths, _You, too._ Then he turns and walks briskly out of the bar. Somewhere between the booth where Chaff has sat back down and the door leading out onto the busy sidewalk, his eyes once more sink to the ground.


	4. Wenceslas

Author's Note: I had previously not dared post this chapter here. But in the interest of continuity, and having been emboldened by the material certain others have posted without repercussions, I'm taking the leap. If anyone reading this is offended enough to consider reporting me, I'd ask that you PM me first and I will take it back down. If my story is deleted from this site I'll move it to (archive of our own) and keep posting there, but I'd much prefer to stay here.

Warning: This is a harsh, graphic chapter of a very dark story. It includes an explicit rape scene. If you're too young for such material, please don't read this.

Disclaimer: I own none of the recognizable elements of this story and make no financial gain from it.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 4**

Haymitch knocks on the door thrice, loud and steady. Tonight he wears a royal blue velvet suit with a white silk shirt and a frilly cravat. The ever-present gold cuff glitters on his right wrist. A line of tiny diamond studs runs all along the edge of his right ear, twenty-six of them in all. The piercings had been done that morning and had been iced to cut down on the redness and swelling. Before he'd been taken from the Cell tonight, his stylist had dabbed a layer of make-up around each one with her smallest applicator. His ear throbs with pain whenever anything brushes against it- like his friggin _hair_\- but the piercings look fully healed.

The door opens, and a tall man in an expensively tailored black suit regards him wordlessly.

_Speak_, he reminds himself. "Hello, sir. I'm Haymitch." _Smile_, he reminds himself, but he can't. "May I come in?"

Tonight's john, Wenceslas Seisty, gives him a slow, deliberate look up and down. Haymitch blushes and looks away. This makes ten- nights, johns, deaths. Most recently what had died was the anger. Now all he feels is burning shame and slow rot.

"Yes, I think so," the man decides, and steps aside to let Haymitch walk past him into the tenth hotel suite.

"Have a seat, Haymitch," the man says, gesturing to the grouping of opulent, overly plush furniture around the strictly for-show fireplace. He watches as Haymitch settles himself into one of the wingback chairs, watches the blond cross his ankles and steeple long fingers over his flat belly and assume a palpable waiting attitude.

"Are you allowed to drink?" Wenceslas asks.

"Yes, sir," Haymitch replies indifferently. Not enough to help. One drink, if his purchaser offers. He is also allowed to say as little as possible.

"What would you like?"

"I really don't care, sir." Why can't they just get on with it? This man is going to rape him, and he isn't even allowed to ask him not to. A drink won't change anything.

Wenceslas comes toward him, reaches out to him, and tugs on his mutilated ear. Haymitch cries out sharply, scratching at the arms of the too-fussy chair. Shaking, he clamps down on his reaction. _Be quiet, be still, three hours isn't that long, it'll be over soon._

"Haymitch. Look at me." The voice is calm, not noticeably angry or excited, and that is undoubtedly a good thing. A real _bright side_. Haymitch lifts his grey eyes to meet those of his soon-to-be-rapist. Grey and golden hazel, one looking up and the other looking down, one in pain and the other in control, and he finally understands that this has always been inevitable. He fishes deep inside what remains of himself and comes up with a snarky smile.

Wenceslas smiles back, sly and knowing. "I know you don't want to be here. I know you won't enjoy what we do tonight, except perhaps on the basest, most purely physical level. Do you consider yourself to be gay?"

"No." Haymitch answers, still staring up into his eyes.

"Have you ever had sex with another man, one who hadn't bought your services?"

Haymitch pushes his lanky form up from the chair a little, bringing his face close to the other man's. "Just fuck me, _sir_. I'll be a total slut… or an innocent little virgin. Whatever you… _desire_."

The man pushes him back down, but he does it gently. "More of the former, apparently. And yet…" He runs his fingers under Haymitch's chin and Haymitch jerks his head away. "You're not quite the jaded whore you would have me believe you are. Well, it _is _less than two weeks so far." He begins to play with Haymitch's hair, pausing to stroke a fingertip ever-so-lightly over his ear in warning. Haymitch endures it stolidly until the man seems to tire of his game and finally steps away.

Sitting down in the matching chair across from Haymitch, Wenceslas says, "'Sir' is much too generic a moniker for our time together. You may call me Wenceslas. And I will continue to do you the courtesy of calling you by your proper name, except when I'm fucking you." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Then I will call you 'sweetheart', and you will respond to it."

Haymitch flinches, unable to suppress it in time. What the _fuck_? He'd started with a sicko who wanted to pretend to be Maysilee while they fucked, and now this guy wanted- what? Is this man actually going to pretend that he, Haymitch, is Katniss?

Wenceslas laughs, apparently discerning his thoughts. "You misunderstand me, Haymitch. I'm well aware you are male." As a token of this acknowledgement, he gives the blond a leering up-and-down look. "And I myself am as gay as Liberace. It just strikes me as wonderfully _ironic_, don't you think?"

"Yeah, it's great," Haymitch drawls. "Should really offset all that _courtesy_."

"And have you been sold to any men yet?"

Smile firmly back in place, Haymitch replies, "Five of them. You'll be six."

The next question is as prompt as it is predictable. "And did you top or bottom, or some of both?"

Haymitch wrinkles his nose. "What do you _think_?"

"I think you've been fucked up the ass by five men you don't know in the space of ten days. You strike me as a natural bottom. But it wouldn't matter if you were as big and muscle-bound as that poor boy Cato was. What Capitol citizen is going to let a boy from District 12 top them. Am I right?"

"Yeah, hey, here's an idea: why don't you stop dicking around and just _fuck_ me?"

"Yes, time is passing. But I must ask one more thing first. Why aren't you available for full nights?"

"I wish I was," Haymitch snaps, almost meaning it. He could practically jerk off to the thought of this pampered Capitolite waking him up from one of his terrors. Maybe violence is becoming his turn-on. That seems inevitable, too.

"Flattered, I'm sure. But why _aren't_ you?"

"They don't explain things to me, Wenceslas." He leans back, casually. "Maybe they're saving me for a better offer, or maybe Snow is going to make me a birthday present to himself. Who knows?"

"You think well of yourself, don't you? Okay, sweetheart, take off your clothes and kneel on the floor."

_Kneel?_ Haymitch thinks, scoffing inwardly as he undresses. Maybe the guy is going to knight him with his cock. _Rise, Sir Hustler of District 12._ Well, it's his freak show. Haymitch drops awkwardly to his knees and sits back on his heels.

Wenceslas comes to stand in front of him and undoes his fly. Haymitch watches at eye level as he pulls out his cock, which is already hard. He tries to remain outwardly impassive. No one has tried to make him perform fellatio so far. Being a man himself, he is pretty sure no other man would care to place something so valuable in the tooth-filled mouth of a murderer-turned-unwilling-prostitute. What if it happened now? _Would_ he bite? It would be an easy way out of all this, because they would undoubtedly kill him. But after they killed him they would bring Katniss and Peeta here to take his place. So, no, he couldn't bite. But there's a good chance he'd throw up, and that might come to the same thing.

Wenceslas hands him a small bottle. "Lube me up, sweetheart. Not too much, now."

With shaking hands, Haymitch squirts some of the cold, slippery substance onto his palm and begins to smooth it over the erection hanging less than a foot in front of his face.

Wenceslas' hand cups the back of his head, pushes him closer. "You're shaking like a leaf, sweetheart. Are you nervous? Want a taste before it goes in you?"

Haymitch twists his head to look up at him, letting his eyes give the challenge he can't speak. _Go on and try._ Wenceslas lets him go regretfully.

"That's enough lube, I think. Get on your hands and knees."

Wenceslas moves around behind him and Haymitch tries to ready himself mentally. Hands grip his hips and hold him in place as the other man's cock begins to push into him. "Oh, sweetheart, you're _tight_," Wenceslas groans.

"No shit," Haymitch hisses quietly, spreading his legs wider in an attempt to ease the pain. It will hurt a lot less once the man is fully inside him. He knows he'll never use that particular appellation again. Do they _train_ Capitolites to mindfuck any outsiders? He supposes they might, especially if Snow takes an interest in the local school curricula.

"Does that feel good, sweetheart? Do you like that?"

Haymitch bites his lip and realizes he is _angry_. That, at least, is some relief. He embraces it, gathers it up and reflects it back at himself where it can do service as a distraction since he no longer has the power to do anything else with it. _You stupid, filthy whore,_ he rages. _Let it hurt!_ He pushes back hard onto the man's cock, emitting a loud groan of pain in spite of himself. Let the rapist take that how he will; Haymitch has responded.

Wenceslas is evidently happy with this response, because he begins to fuck Haymitch fast and hard. "Yeah! I'm going to fuck your tight little ass! Say my name, sweetheart! Say my name!"

Wenceslas is a ridiculously cumbersome name to call out during sex. Is that even doable? Something short and simple would be so much better. For a second he very nearly slips and calls out '_Wench_'.

"Wen-uhn-wenceslas!" he manages around another groan.

"Ah!" Wenceslas cries, pushing in hard. He pulls out most of the way and slams back in.

_Fuck_. That- just _fuck_. It is so messed up for him to be hard right now. And _again_. Stop _doing_ that! Then the cock pulls out of him entirely. For a couple of seconds he thinks it might actually be over. Then Wenceslas slams back into him, tip all the way to the damn _base _in one thrust.

"Fuck!" Haymitch yells, his whole body jerking painfully as he ejaculates, stars flashing in front of his eyes. Wenceslas cries out wordlessly in pleasure and triumph. He pulls Haymitch's head around and covers the side of his face in kisses. The he lets go of his head, wraps and arm around his waist to steady him, and resumes fucking him at a more leisurely pace, laughing softly.

Haymitch is shaking again, but this time it isn't nerves or even humiliation- though he can sense a tidal wave of the latter waiting in the wings. He is post-coital. All of his senses seem to have taken a giant leap up the scale. His cock is twitching, already trying to get hard again. In response to _what_? Being fucked, in every sense of the word?

"Almost there, sweetheart," Wenceslas says breathlessly. "Do you want me to cum inside you?"

"_No_." Haymitch moans, miserable and half-hard.

With a loud groan, Wenceslas pulls his cock out of Haymitch's body. _Wait- that worked?_ Haymitch thinks in surprise.

Wenceslas comes around in front of him again and grabs a handful of his hair to hold his head still. With his other hand he jerks himself off rapidly, and spurts of cum splatter Haymitch's face, his hair, his beard. Wenceslas rubs the tip of his cock in a circle around Haymitch's tightly closed lips, wiping off the last drops. Then he scoops some of it onto two fingers and holds them in front of Haymitch's mouth. "Lick them clean, sweetheart."

Haymitch shakes his head slightly, not so much in refusal as in denial that this is happening.

"Come on, now, sweetheart. You were such a good fuck. I'd really regret having to tell your handler that you were uncooperative, especially after everything you submitted to so _readily_."

"Please, don't," Haymitch whispers.

"Then lick them clean. Now."

Haymitch inches forward until his nose almost touches Wenceslas' hand. The acrid scent of his rapist's cum fills the air. He licks the glistening fluid quickly, nearing gagging at the salty sliminess of it. Swallowing it down convulsively, he continues licking the proffered fingers until Wenceslas withdraws his hand.

"That's a good boy," Wenceslas says mockingly. He tucks himself back into his pants. "The bathroom is over there, through the bedroom. Clean yourself up and get dressed and you may wait in the drawing room until your car arrives. I've no further use for you tonight."

Haymitch stands up and makes his way towards the bathroom. Wenceslas's voice stops him. "Take your clothes with you, Haymitch."

He turns back, having no choice. He needs to get away from this man. He's going to be sick. His stomach is churning. It hurts to walk. He feels a trickle of the other man's mess touch his lips. Revolted, he scrubs his hand over his face. Then it's on his hand and he's still stark naked and is he supposed to wipe it off on his skin? Wenceslas is watching him with an amused smile, and Haymitch is suddenly sure of what Wenceslas will force him to do. It's too much, and he begins to gag.

"Stop that," Wenceslas says sharply. "You want to just swallow it back, Haymitch, because if you throw up, here or in the bathroom, I'm going to put my fist in your ass. Now get your clothes and get out of my sight."

Haymitch swallows over and over again until the urge recedes for the moment. He gets his clothes and quickly retreats to the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Carefully setting the garments on the marble counter, he turns his eyes to the full-length mirror. He takes his reflection in and thinks that now he _really_ looks like what he is. That waitress will have no doubts at all next time she sees him, her or anyone else. "The other major food group," he tells the real him. Then he has to swallow a couple more times to get past it.

A pile of thick fluffy washcloths embroidered with the hotel's logo is sitting on a marble shelf next to the shower. They are in arranged in a pyramid. He takes the top one and scrubs his hand. The next one he wets, and begins to wipe off his face. He wipes his mouth first, though he knows it won't do any good now. The taste lingers and this time he swallows to try to get rid of it.


	5. Old Friends

Author's Note: This chapter is rated M. It's not nearly as dark as chapters two and four, but it is graphic. If you're too young for this material, please don't read it.

AN2: Jga and PuzzlesolverDramaqueen, thanks for the follows! And Nazzli, there will be a lot more of Peeta and Katniss in coming chapters, don't worry. Stay tuned!

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 5**

This is the eleventh night. Haymitch feels jumpy, standing outside of the hotel room. He's been jumpy all day. Hunger gnaws at his stomach. He'd tried to eat the meals sent for him, but he hadn't been able to get down more than two or three bites before he'd leaned over and been sick. Everything tasted the _same_. The only thing that didn't taste the _same_ was the liquor. He's not ready for this, not after last night. But the syringe in its velvet case rests in his pocket, and ready or not he knocks on the door.

The door opens, and he is shocked. He wouldn't have thought that possible anymore. He takes an involuntary step back.

"_Effie_?" he asks, gray eyes hurt and disbelieving.

"Haymitch, come in!" Effie chirps, gesturing expansively. She glances back and forth up the corridor and gives him a meaningful little tilt of her head. _Well?_

Numb, Haymitch comes forward. Effie shuts the door and comes to stand in front of him. A hint of her familiar scent reaches him, sandalwood mixed with something unidentifiable. He turns his face away.

"Why, you're _sober_. That's a pleasant surprise."

He turns back to her. "They've got me on a ration, princess. Aren't you lucky?" The hurt vulnerability she'd thought she saw at first is completely gone. It's as though all that ever existed here is this snarky, arrogant man with the golden blond mane and the tracing of diamonds on his ear. "So, shall we?" he says insinuatingly with a pointed glance towards the bedroom.

Effie gives him a considering look. "If only you could be as enthusiastic about the rest of your duties as a Victor."

He winces slightly, but the jagged smile comes right back. "What are you even doing here, princess? I would think this would be a little… _redundant_ for you."

She blushes slightly. "Good sex is never redundant," she says primly. Capitolites _can_ say such things primly. In fact, the phrase sounds so practiced that Haymitch finds himself wondering if they teach it in school here, alongside other favorites like, 'Vulgarity is a mask the ignorant hide behind.'

"Well, then," he says. "Wanna screw?" Just to watch her reaction. This is so bizarre. They should bait each other for at least a half hour. It's their version of foreplay, after all.

"You're incorrigible. Oh well, at least I won't have to worry about you passing out on top of me this time," she huffs, heading for the bedroom.

He follows. "I never passed out on top of you."

"How would _you _know?" She sits on the edge of the bed and begins undoing the myriad of catches along her knee-high stilettos.

"I suppose I'll still have to deal with your running commentary. Hardly seems fair." He takes off his shoes and begins undoing his cravat. He's very thankful that Effie isn't the sort who wants to undress him herself.

He finishes undressing well before she does, which gives him time to sprawl on the bed and watch her struggle with the laces on the back of her corset. He could offer to help, but why start now?

This still doesn't make sense, but the last thing he wants to do right now is to think about context. He'll pick it apart later, because that's how his mind works. He's never been able to leave well enough alone. For now, he watches Effie undress and lets her distract him.

She's always been good at that.

She finally gets the corset off, giving him what passes for a dirty look in Effie-land. It's kind of adorable. _Funny_, he means. She shucks out of her skirt, muttering something in which the word 'hick' is clearly discernable.

He yawns showily. "While we're young, princess."

"Move over, you oaf."

She slides into bed next to him and gives him her hesitant little smile that's as good as shorthand. _Kiss me already! _She doesn't like making the first move, never has.

He kisses her, keeping his eyes open just in case his treacherous mind tries to forget it is _her_. His hands roam over her, heavy and rough, and she purrs even as they continue to kiss. They break apart, and her hand goes right to his hair. But it's Effie, and it's alright. She cards her fingers through his hair and starts talking in the soft shiny voice that she only uses in a certain type of situation.

"You look good, Haymitch. You should try to stay sober more often, you really should. Your eyes are such a nice shade of gray, like the sky before a thunderstorm. Really too nice to be bloodshot all the time."

"Thanks," he says sarcastically. He rubs his thumbs over her nipples, earning a little moan that breaks up the flood of words nicely. Usually he tunes her voice to an oddly pleasant background drone. It's strange, but she more than makes up for it. Tonight, though, her voice is a real turn on. Every word is _Effie_.

"Diamonds suit you. I always knew you'd clean up nicely if you would just listen to me and your stylists. Gold and diamonds."

He shakes his head to free his hair from her hands and then nips her neck. She throws her head back in invitation.

"Oh, Haymitch, that's lovely. Try and leave a mark, won't you? I so enjoy-" She breaks off with a little cry as he bites down on a little pinch of skin hard enough to draw a drop of blood. "Oh, _thank_ you, you're very considerate tonight, very good."

He pushes her over onto her back, trails one hand slowly down her body. His fingers ghost over her throat, over one of her breasts, down her ribs.

"Oh, I'm so glad I was able to see you tonight. It's really been an _ordeal_ trying to get an appointment. Haymitch, dear, would you believe they kept me waiting _three days_? Me!"

He kisses her again to cut off that line of commentary. "Shut up, princess," he breathes against her lips.

She starts to say something, and breaks off with another moan as his hand slides between her legs and begins to stroke her. "Oh! Oh, that's _lovely_…"

She's already wet and ready, but he finds himself wanting to make this last. He never even considers taking the injection. Eleven nights, ten strangers; being raped on thick hotel carpets and having two-hour long drug enhanced fucks that leave him utterly exhausted and painfully ashamed. Natural, consensual sex isn't what he wants- that would be to curl up somewhere dark and quiet and alone and drink himself into oblivion. But maybe this isn't a half bad second choice.

"Effie," he says softly.

"Haymitch?" She looks up into his eyes. Hers are bright green, her natural eye color.

"I'm glad you're here," he tells her, sinking into those eyes.

She smiles, and then startles him by throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down. He almost does fall on top of her, and she's kissing along the line of his jaw and flicking her tongue against his skin in quick little licks. He growls his arousal and slides a finger into her. He slides it in and out until she's forced to break off what she's doing. "_More_!" she pleads.

"As you like it, princess," he growls. Withdrawing his hand, he shifts and enters her. She arches her back and bucks against him. Her nails scratch down his back. He matches her rhythm with the ease of long practice. As soon as she settles a little, moans trailing off into breathy little gasps, he grabs her hips in his strong hands and rolls them. On top now, she tosses her head and he feels her first orgasm crash through her. It nearly pulls him over the edge, but he manages to hold on, groaning. Her nails scratch down his upper arms as she bounces up and down. He admires her breasts bouncing above him before reaching up to squeeze one. She hisses and sinks her nails into his other arm.

"Oh, so _now_ you want to play rough," he says with a throaty chuckle.

His hands find her shoulders and he takes a deep breath- which isn't exactly easy at this point in the festivities- and then surges up. She goes over with him on top of her, slamming onto her back with her head hanging off the edge of the bed. "Oh, _Haymitch_!" she cries as she crests again, bucking wildly.

The trick of that move is to stay inside her while they topple, and he doesn't always manage it. Tonight he does, and his own orgasm hits him seconds after hers. He rolls over next to her, and they both lay there panting.

"That was-" he pants.

"_Amazing_," she finishes, just as breathless. Then she laughs, turning onto her side and propping herself up on an elbow. "You're such a pretty thing when you're cleaned up properly."

"Don't you _ever_ shut up?" His exasperation is only half feigned.

She shakes her head. "If I keep talking long enough I'm _sure_ it will have a civilizing influence on you."

"Why _are _you here?" he asks. The afterglow has already worn off, and so decisively that he thinks he only imagined it anyway. He gets up and starts getting dressed. "Why would you _pay_ for something you've had for free already? Are you enjoying the power-trip, princess?" Damn it, he'd actually felt _alright_ for a minute or two. It comes to him that Effie would have learned to mindfuck right alongside her _peers_.

"I've just come from seeing the children." She sits up, stretches with feline grace, and looks rather dispiritedly between him and her button-and-clasp-riddled clothes. Deciding that there's no help to be had here, she reaches for her skirt. "They asked me to check on you. You've got them very worried, poor dears."

Haymitch falters in the act of buttoning up his shirt. His breath catches painfully, and for just a second it seems he can't remember how to breathe. "The children? Katniss and Peeta, you mean?"

"How many others do you have? Can you stop being boorish for one minute and do up these clasps for me?"

"They're not here, are they? They can't be here! Oh fuck, they _can't_ be."

"Mind your language!" she admonishes.

"_Fuck_ my language! Where are they?" He begins pacing back and forth, the rage sparking from him like electricity. He pauses in front of the bureau and stares wild-eyed into the gilt-framed mirror.

Using the opportunity to catch his eye, Effie says cautiously, "Easy, dear. Hush. They're-" She breaks off with a hastily stifled scream as he gives a yell of incoherent rage and smashes his fist into the mirror.

"Haymitch! Haymitch, stop!" she pleads as he upends the whole bureau with one heave. But he's beyond listening, and the two or three other times she's seen him have a fit like this she's been able to leave quickly and send someone else to deal with him. He picks up the wingback chair and hurls it into the wall with frightening strength. There's only her this time, but he could tear her apart.

Having destroyed all of the furniture within his immediate reach, Haymitch sinks to the floor panting and muttering. "Fucking lying bastards." He twitches the hair out of his eyes with angry impatience. Just as Effie is beginning to relax a little his hand comes up to his bejeweled ear and he tears one of the diamond studs loose and drops the bloodied gem indifferently to the carpet.

"Stop it!" Effie yells, and without conscious thought she flies from the bed and crashes to her knees beside him, almost tripping in her haste to reach him. She grabs his wrist. "They're fine! The children are fine! They're at home in District Twelve!"

He pulls his wrist free and distractedly licks the blood from his fingers. Even in this situation, Effie winces.

"Really?" he asks, staring at her with scary intensity. "Tell me the truth, Effie. Please. Where are they _really_?"

"They're in 12. Goodness, where else would they be? Haymitch, your manners are atrocious."

He just continues to stare at her. Slowly, he relaxes. "I believe you," he says. He sighs, looks from her to the smear of scarlet remaining on his hand, and wipes his hand on his trousers with a little shrug.

"Oh Haymitch, do you actually think that's better than licking them?"

"Well, princess, maybe you ought to just fuck other Capitolites, then," he flares at her. "Because, hey, you can take the whore out of the cathouse, but you know how _that_ one goes."

"Please don't talk like that," she says, and he's taken aback to see tears in her emerald eyes.

"Sorry," he mutters.

"It's not so bad, is it?" she asks, willing him to reassure her. Except for that first glimpse in the hallway, he had seemed alright. He had seemed fine when they were having sex.

He sighs. "What do you want me to say?"

"Well… I mean, it's only sex, right? And with the best class of people!" Effie summons up a bright smile, but her eyes give her away. Haymitch truly does look beautiful tonight. His freshly washed hair shines under the lights, he's properly dressed in fine clothes, and he's sober but not shaking and ill-looking. Even the few drops of scarlet on the side of his neck and on his shoulder look more like decorative accents than blood. But the image that rises in her mind is that of an indifferently made toy, right before it jitters apart.

"I hate them," he says in the lost, unhappy voice of a child. "They have everything, now."

"Are you quite alright? I told the children you must be fine, the Capitol always takes good care of you when you're here. Oh, please don't fret so. Just try to enjoy yourself, won't you?"

He shakes his head, and then startles her by breaking into song. "Always look on the bright side of life…" His voice is cracked and half-laughing and horrible. He grabs her hands and swings them in time to the words. "Always look on the right side of life!" He caws a loud, unwholesome laugh at her.

"Let go!" she demands, jerking away. He only tightens his hold, grinning at her. "You're scaring me! Let go!"

Abruptly, he drops her hands. The dark hilarity is gone as quickly as it appeared. "Please don't tell the kids, Effie. Leave me that, at least."

"Okay, I won't," she promises. She'd promise anything to soothe him right now. It's not enough, though. She looks for words and comes up with nothing useful, so she just wraps her arms around him and holds him together for a while longer.


	6. Back Home

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 6**

Haymitch trudges through the snow, thinking about nothing except his destination. The archway that marks the entrance to Victors Village looms up out of the fog, and he speaks aloud. "Almost there. S'okay." He bows his head, letting the long hood of his loose black coat fall forward around his face. For a few steps he walks faster, but then he slows again. _Why was he hurrying?_ It had seemed for a second that there was a good reason to complete this last bit of the trip as quickly as possible, but between one step and the next the reason has fled. He doesn't want to think anyway. On he trudges, and on, through the snow.

"Haymitch!" Someone calls out, making him jump. Right, _her_. _Her _and the boy. The ever-loving _kids_. He gets a grip on his suddenly all-too-present thoughts and walks faster.

"Haymitch!" Now she's running through the snow towards him, and at the sound of her rapid footsteps he tenses up and turns toward the figure running at him out of the fog.

"It's Katniss, it's _Katniss, it's Katniss_," he tells himself rapidly. His heart is racing, and he wants to run but she's too close and too fast, and he'll have to fight-

"_Stop!_" He yells at her as loudly and forcefully as he can. Stunned, she skids to a stop perhaps ten feet away. He stares at her from the shadows of the hood, breathing hard. He needs to see, and he rakes the hood back without taking his eyes off her. If there are others sneaking up on him, he's dead anyway.

She is staring right back at him, also tensed and ready to join battle. Then she takes a half step back, away from him, and speaks. "Haymitch? Calm down, okay? I'm Katniss. You're in District 12."

_Katniss. It's Katniss._

He takes a step back, too. "Don't do that. Don't run at me. Shit, do you even _have _a brain in that head of yours?"

"Sorry," she says, sounding like she means it for a wonder.

"Yeah, _sorry_ won't help either of us if I kill you because you come running at me like a fucking tribute," he growls.

"Well, I'm glad to see you, too! Surly old drunk." She cautiously comes closer. "Anyway, what makes you think I wouldn't kill _you_?" The last is spoken teasingly, Katniss trying to dispel the uncomfortable moment.

Haymitch shakes his head, noticing the way her eyes fix on the glitter of diamonds in his mutilated ear. He pulls his hood forward again. "Going home. Go away." He turns and resumes his trek through the snow, which seems to have gotten deeper and thicker. Has he ever been this tired?

"I'm following you," she calls as a precaution, before catching up and falling into step beside him. "We've been worried. What happened in the Capitol?"

Haymitch stops again and scrutinizes her carefully, trying to figure out how much she knows. Effie had promised not to tell, but it's hard to imagine Effie keeping anyone's secrets to herself. _Secrets, what a joke. Whole damn Capitol knows._

"You two lovebirds are safe for now. For the moment." He shakes his head and a strand of blond hair falls in front of his eye. "S'okay."

"How? What did you do?" She asks warily.

"I met with a bunch of people. The rich and powerful." He turns away from her yet again. _Not much further_.

Katniss dogs his steps. "So you- what? Had dinner with rich people and got pretty little gifts from them and convinced them not to turn us into sex slaves? Just like that?"

He finds that he is suddenly furious with her. "Go away," he growls from the depths of his hood, focusing on his steps in the treacherous snow. Mood swings have become his constant companion in the last week or so, but she has no way of knowing that. So hitting her would be a shitty thing to do, he reminds himself.

Still she follows him. They are there, at the house, and he turns around again. "Fuck off," he growls, emphasizing each word. "Go kiss Peeta, or have sex with your erstwhile cousin, or sing lullabies to your precious little sister. Just get out of here."

But Katniss sets her feet and growls right back. "Get a grip. I don't care if you want me here or not. It's been two weeks, Haymitch! For two weeks we haven't known if you were dead or alive, or whether the train was going to show up one morning and take us to our new lives as _prostitutes,_ and all you have to say is we're safe _for the moment_?" She takes a deep breath, puffing out the cold air in a little cloud before she speaks again. "Turn around and open the door, Haymitch. Both of us are going to go inside, I'm going to get you a bottle, and you're going to tell me everything that's happened in the last two weeks." She's attempting to use the same calm, firm tone Peeta had always used when he wanted Haymitch to do something.

Haymitch steps toward her and gives her a hard shove, knocking her down into the endless snow. She's back on her feet in a flash, staring at him wide-eyed. "Haymitch?" He snorts at her derisively, then turns and goes into his house, closing the door between them.

Haymitch goes straight into the kitchen, breathing hard. It's as cold in the house as it had been outdoors. Of course it is. It's midwinter in twelve, and no one has lit a fire in here in two weeks. Shivering, he goes to the cabinets. A panicky feeling that there will be no liquor in the house grips him, and he yanks open the first door hard enough to break one of the hinges. Then he just stares. He had expected the cabinet to be empty, and for a few seconds he's sure he's hallucinating. More than a dozen full bottles of white liquor fill the shelves.

Peeta and Katniss had made sure he'd have alcohol waiting for him when he got back. The ever-loving _kids._ His anger deserts him in a whoosh and his eyes start to tear up.

"Hell's bells," he growls, frustrated and embarrassed and _crying_. Damn mood swings. He grabs one of the bottles on his way to the floor. There he sits, leaning against the cabinet and grimly swigging from the bottle. Ah, equilibrium at last. The familiar and longed-for warmth fills him and surrounds him like an old friend whose deadly affection never wavers.

A quarter of the way through the bottle he remembers that he is tired. He still wears his long coat, but at some point the hood has fallen back. They had made sure he ate in the Capitol, but he still lost weight. His cheeks are more hollowed than they had been, and with the Capitol make-up finally washed off the shadows under his eyes are prominent. Weak light filters in through the kitchen window, and in it he looks pale and ill.

He had come within a hairsbreadth of punching Katniss today. He had almost hurt her.

"Haymitch?" A voice calls out to him as the front door closes. He hadn't even registered the sound of it opening. He ignores such things easily in the Village. The thought of someone coming in while he was asleep and killing him had always held a certain appeal. Considering whom he is and what he does every year, surely there are plenty of people here who hate him enough? It had never happened, and is unlikely to now that he has neighbors, but sometimes he still hopes.

"Haymitch?" It is Peeta, and telling him to go away would be entirely useless. Before Haymitch can think of anything that might actually work, Peeta is in front of him. The boy unhesitatingly reaches out and grabs the bottle. "Give it." Haymitch lets go, and Peeta sets the bottle aside. Then he cuffs the side of Haymitch's head, and hard. "What's gotten into you, Haymitch? You shoved Katniss hard enough to knock her down."

"Sorry," Haymitch mumbles, his ear ringing from the blow. Peeta had hit the right side of his head, and the mostly quiescent piercings awake with a screech of pain.

"Alright," Peeta says with a sigh. He sits back on his heels. "But you don't ever raise a hand to Katniss again, no matter what. I won't tolerate that, you understand?"

"I won't. Hell, _I_ won't tolerate it either. But you need to tell her to leave me alone when she's warned. My control isn't what it used to be."

"Fine, I'll tell her." Peeta's stern look is morphing into one of concern. "You look like hell. What happened?"

"The Capitol happened. Good talk. I'm going to get drunk now. You know the way out."

"It's freezing in here." Peeta gets up and stalks from the room, and a moment later Haymitch hears him moving stovelengths into the fireplace.

"Well, that's one thing taken care of," Peeta announces, brushing his hands off on his pants as he comes back in. He pauses, and Haymitch thinks he's probably checking over the mental list tided 'Caring for the Drunk' and deciding which item to tackle next. How did things get so screwed up and topsy-turvy?

"I brought the supply of wood, by the way," Peeta tells him. "Katniss brought the liquor."

"Lucky, lucky me," Haymitch says sarcastically.

"Lucky isn't what I would call it," Peeta says pityingly. Haymitch doesn't even care right now, not much anyway.

Peeta takes his free hand and tugs on it. "Come on, we're moving to the living room to be near the fire."

Haymitch stands and obediently allows Peeta to lead him to one of the armchairs in front of the fire. He isn't unsteady at all yet. He takes note of that, realizing that he'll have to drink a lot more before going to sleep if he wants to keep the nightmares away. He hasn't slept more than two or three hours at a stretch in the last two weeks, which is probably the reason for the mood swings.

"Here, take off your coat."

Haymitch stiffens. "Undressing me already? Might be better for you if I slept first," he says with a brittle smile as he undoes the fastenings of the coat.

Peeta gives him an odd look. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing," Haymitch says dismissively. Damn, he is tired, too tired to talk with Peeta without saying stupid things. Fortunately, the boy is as much of an innocent as it's possible for a Victor to be. He hands over the coat and sits down.

"Take your boots off."

Haymitch keeps his mouth firmly shut and works the boots off without bothering to unlace them.

"Socks."

"Were you this bossy before? It doesn't _seem_ like you were."

"Come on, Haymitch. They're soaking wet. Please?" Peeta says the last with exaggerated sweetness.

"Well, how can I say no to that?" Haymitch takes the socks off and tosses them into a corner. "Or to anything else, for that matter."

Peeta sits down on the floor in front of him. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Last night, in the Capitol. Sit in the other chair."

"You need to eat. I brought a couple of sandwiches from the bakery. Is chicken salad okay?"

Haymitch shrugs. "Yeah, whatever." He knows this routine well, and the sooner he eats the sooner Peeta will let him go back to getting drunk.

Peeta retrieves the sandwiches and hands Haymitch his on a chipped plate. Sitting in the other chair he leans forward to warm himself at the fire, glancing over once to make sure Haymitch is eating.

"Haymitch?" he asks after several minutes.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me what happened in the Capitol."

"Just leave it alone, Peeta," he says tiredly. "You can't help, I don't want to talk about it, and you're better off not knowing anyway."

"What if you get worse?"

"It can't get worse for me, and you two are safe for now. I'll tell you if that part changes."

"No, what if _you_ get worse? You shoved Katniss today, and you've never done anything like that before. We're both used to dealing with you when you're drunk, hung over, in withdrawal, in the grip of night terrors, and just pissed off. But you haven't gotten violent with us even once through all that. You said yourself that you're having trouble controlling your responses to things. Whatever happened in the Capitol, I need to know so that we can stop you from getting any worse. What if you really hurt her next time?"

"I was just tired," he says weakly.

"No, Haymitch. You need to tell me."

Haymitch leans back and looks into the fire as he considers. "Snow agreed to hold off on selling you two. The love story is still very popular in the Capitol. There are plenty who are still so titillated by it that they don't want to 'come between' you and Katniss. We can't expect that to last, but just maybe it buys us time to think of something else."

"We _have_ to think of something else. We need to have a new plan ready, Haymitch. We can't let them do that to Katniss."

"Never," Haymitch agrees fervently, taking a long drink from his bottle. "Not to her and not to you, either."

"She should be here. We need to start working on a way out of this. I'm going to go get her," Peeta declares, standing up.

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "Joy. You just do that. I'll wait right here."

Peeta turns back in the doorway. "Wait- what else?"

"Isn't that enough? What else do you want?"

Peeta shakes his head and returns to his seat. "How about a straight answer? I know that's a little like speaking in a foreign language for you, but try."

It's that tone, the one Katniss tried on him earlier, the behave-yourself-and-come-along-now tone that in a right-side-up world would lose all its power over you before you were a teenager. He's distantly pissed that it _still works_ when Peeta uses it.

"Snow… said he'd hold off in light of the love story, and if something was done to appease the Capitolites who were disappointed with the delay… and to make up for the lost money."

Peeta waits, already seeing where this is going but not wanting to say it. Haymitch is clever, and brilliant improvisations are his specialty. It could still be something less horrible than what it sounds like.

Haymitch finally meets his eyes, and his look is utterly bleak. "Don't make me say it?"

"Snow is selling you, isn't he? It's you instead of us. At least for now."

Haymitch nods. "Thank Katniss for me, for the liquor. Frankly, her gift was a better idea than yours."

"Thank you, Haymitch," Peeta says, his voice tight with emotion. "I'm so sorry. But, thank you."

"It's the lesser of two hells, boy. If you live long enough, you'll learn all about trying to pick the least hideous option."

"I'll make sure Katniss only comes over here with me." That's one thing he can take care of, at least.

Haymitch nods, acknowledging his effort. "Don't tell her about this. She'll just do something stupidly brave and impulsive and get us all killed. Wait- tell her about it and then point her towards the nearest gun-carrying Peacekeeper. Just make sure I'm there. I'd hate to get left out."

"You wouldn't really kill yourself, would you?"

"Not a chance. If I did, you and Katniss would be in the Capitol serving your first johns a week later. I'll protect you for as long as I can."

"That'll have to do for now. Someday, you're going to have other reasons to go on living. We'll think of a way out of this, Haymitch. Please, don't let this define you."

"Don't be stupid. _Don't let it define me?_ By _definition_, I'm a whore, a prostitute, a hustler. _Letting_ has nothing to do with it. I'm a murderer, a Victor, a drunkard, and a whore. Don't pander to me, kid. It doesn't fucking help." He realizes he's almost snarling now, furious again. He doesn't mean to snarl at Peeta, who is, after everything, just a kid trying to fix a situation he shouldn't even have been exposed to. But fury is better than shame, as long as he has the choice.

"Alright," Peeta says quietly. "Alright. Do you need me to leave for a while? If you do, you can tell me. I'll come back later today."

Haymitch regards him, and then turns to the fire. Peeta learns quickly, doesn't he? He's already adjusting his methods to deal with that 'lack of control'. Haymitch sighs dispiritedly and reminds himself that he should be grateful for this instead of finding it mildly depressing.

"I'm fine. I'm not going to hit you."

"Good. Is it okay if I touch your arm?"

"What for?" Haymitch asks, confused.

"I don't want you to develop an aversion to touch. And if I can't prevent that, maybe at least you won't develop an aversion to _my_ touch. If you have just a few minutes of non-threatening physical contact each day while you're here, it might make things a lot easier for both of us in the future."

"Things… things like you taking care of me like I'm a damn kid?"

"Alright, yes, if you need to state it out like that." Peeta sighs and brushes a hand through his hair. "Come on, Haymitch. Don't get defensive, okay? I know you're not a kid. But you are an addict, and afflicted with a whole slew of psychological problems on top of that. You won't deny that?"

"No, I guess I won't." He waves a hand to stave off any further persuasion in this area. "Never mind. Go ahead." He extends an arm towards Peeta's chair, but Peeta gets up and comes to stand beside him before laying a hand on his arm. And that's alright, as long as Haymitch keeps an eye on it.

"It seems a bit bizarre for you to be worrying about an aversion to your touch now, considering that twenty minutes after we first met you were stripping me naked."

"To bathe you, because you were drunk to a point of complete incoherence and you needed help." Peeta runs his hand along Haymitch's forearm as he participates in the distraction the other man already seems to need. "I'm surprised you even remember that."

"I'm good at connecting the dots." He pulls his arm away. "It's fine, Peeta. All I need is some sleep. Which will be a whole lot easier if you _leave._ Or were you going to tuck me in and sing me a lullaby?"

Peeta retreats to the other chair. "I'll stay a while longer if you want," he offers, a bit awkwardly. "I don't mind. What I mean is, maybe you shouldn't be alone right now."

"What you mean is, you have no idea what to do but that messed-up obsessive drive to take care of everyone is telling you that you have to do _something._" He sighs. "This is exactly why I knew better than to tell you. Leave off, kid. Just… leave off."

Peeta gets up and heads for the door, but he turns back at the threshold. "I'll come back tomorrow, Haymitch. We'll think of something. I'm so sorry, I really am."

"Damn you and your fucking worthless apology. Get the fuck out." He doesn't look up, but a minute later he hears the door close softly.


	7. In the Square

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: I've borrowed a quote from the movie 'The Butterfly Effect'. I did not create 'The Butterfly Effect', don't own it, and make no financial gain from it.

N2: I've also borrowed the slur 'mine rat love' from Hufflelit's excellent story, "Haymitch's Games". There is a link to that story on my favorites page.

N3: The final paragraph of this chapter is a somewhat oblique reference to the very imaginative and original story "It's the Apocalypse, Sweetheart", by Ellana-san. That one also has a link on my favorites page.

N4: Thanks to my latest reviewer for their kind words. It's dark subject matter, and I hope I do it justice. And of course, staying in-character is one of the most essential tasks of any fanfiction. So you made my day by saying I've managed it so far.

**Capitol Nights**

His mind is howling this morning. He's in the bathroom, still. He had stumbled in here out of pure habit when he woke up. Taking care of business without any conscious thought is an invaluable skill when conscious thought is just about impossible until he's wrapped himself around the first couple drinks of the day.

Afterwards he had simply lain back down right where he was. He's awake and trying to zone out. He's been crying most of the morning, but he thinks that part's over, at least. He'd like to get out of the bathroom, but he can't open the door. The stupid, childish, irrational conviction persists that someone is waiting just outside. It will be a man, expensively dressed, and he'll be _hard_.

"Wanna sit up?" he murmurs out loud. He doesn't move though, not yet. He thinks he should get up and get it over with. But he just can't work up the will to move. He can smell himself, and he smells like vomit and sex and blood. "No one out there," he tells himself. He swallows and that taste is in his mouth and he lurches to the side and throws up. Then he lies back down, rolling onto his other side so he won't have to look at the mess. He's crying a little, but it's because of the cruddy, slimy taste, that's all.

He's still dressed in the clothes he came back to 12 in yesterday. A creature of the Capitol lies on the white tiles, clad in fine linen and silk and diamonds. He's an insignificant little Capitol plaything, undeniably and irretrievably sullied but not worn out yet, not by a long shot. The man outside will fuck him, Balthamos will remind him who he belongs to and probably torture him a little to make sure the message sticks, he'll get his sedative injection and he'll go back to sleep. This is his daily routine, his job and his only purpose.

In the time between waking up and being prepped for whoever is to have him that night, he counts people he has killed and how each died, struggles to dredge up their faces. There are fifty-three names on that list, so it takes a while.

He casts a glance at the door and closes his eyes again. "There's _no one_ out there," he says again.

"Haymitch?" a male voice calls from outside the bathroom.

Haymitch jerks up on his elbow, eyes going wide and panicky. Balthamos has used the wand on him every single night since he tore one of the diamonds out of his ear. He takes a ragged breath and wills his mind into damage control mode. He'd best not be caught hiding in here.

He sits up and begins undressing rapidly.

"Haymitch, are you in there? Just say something so I know you're alright."

His hands are shaking as he fumbles with the buttons. He can't make out the words the man is saying, other than his name. His tone is ominous, though.

The door opens. Haymitch is frozen in the corner against the bathtub. He has gotten his shirt off, unthinkingly dropping it right on top of the puddle of vomit. He is in the process of undoing his fly. He and Peeta stare at each other for a few seconds before Haymitch looks away and hastily grabs his shirt.

"_Don't_ put that on," Peeta says, taking charge in the nick of time. He doesn't think he could stand to see Haymitch put the sodden shirt on. It feels like the final hideous touch to this picture.

Haymitch drops the shirt again and wipes his hands off on the legs of his pants.

"Let me help you, alright?" Peeta comes forward and crouches down in front of him.

"Then stop looking at me like I'm a hurt puppy."

Holding on to his patience with both hands, Peeta backs up a little and then stands. "I'm going to get you some clean clothes. I'll leave the door open." He waits for a response, but gets nothing. "Haymitch, what happened?"

"You already know what happened. Have you shared with Katniss yet? Bet you have. I bet you ran right over there as soon as you could get away from me."

"I haven't told her anything, and I won't. It's not mine to tell. But you have to pull yourself together. She's going to come over here, _today_, and the three of us are going to think of a way out of this."

"Oh joy, more company. Let me just get gussied up. I'm afraid you'll have to do without my stylist this morning." Haymitch undoes his fly as he talks with a sort of venomous cheer. He stands up to remove his trousers and briefs. He doesn't exactly watch Peeta while he undresses, but his eyes flicker over him more than once.

Peeta supposes the other man is gauging his reaction, or just making sure he hasn't gotten any closer. He's up and down this morning. Five minutes ago he'd been ready to put a vomit-soaked shirt on for the sake of being fully dressed. They need to start thinking about how they can escape, because no matter what they can't let the Capitol do this to Katniss. But right now Haymitch doesn't seem stable enough to even be in the same room with Katniss.

He watches Haymitch turn on the shower and step directly under the spray with a gasp. It takes the water about five minutes to heat up in 12 in the wintertime. Haymitch stubbornly pulls the shower curtain closed and Peeta listens to his steady stream of cursing. It tapers off slowly as the water heats up.

After a few minutes, Haymitch calls, "Are you still out there, boy?"

"Right here," Peeta calls out from the bedroom. He pulls a shirt out of one of the dresser drawers, sniffs it, and drops it into the growing pile of shirts at his feet. It seems kind of perverse to put dirty shirts in the dresser, but maybe that's just his mother talking. He discards another shirt that has obviously had liquor spilled down the front of it, continuing to muse. His mother would be after him with a rolling pin, but for all he knows this is normal. Maybe the clean shirts are in a hamper somewhere.

Nothing further from the direction of the shower, and Peeta pulls open another drawer. This one is full of mostly empty liquor bottles. Giving up on the bureau, he turns to the wardrobe. This is apparently where Haymitch keeps his Capitol clothes, wadded up in a heap and shoved into a corner. Peeta picks up something in sky blue and drops it again, wrinkling his nose. These are wet, and they don't smell like spilled liquor, either. Well, that's a disturbing new element.

"Behind you, kid," Haymitch's voice drawls, too well-versed on 'Victor etiquette' to sneak up on one of the other Chosen Ones. Then he reaches around Peeta and gently shuts the wardrobe door. "Nothing in there."

"Haymitch, did you-" Peeta turns around and stops talking because Haymitch is naked, his hair dripping on his shoulders. He's looking at the piles of clothes on the floor.

"Piss on them? Yeah. Seemed like a good idea at the time." He shrugs and snags a shirt at random. "Which pile did you throw my trousers into? Probably be more efficient if I just give up on underwear, don't you think?"

"Haymitch," Peeta says on a sigh.

"Oh, sorry, does my line of work make you uncomfortable, Cupcake?" Haymitch sneers.

Peeta grabs a pair of pants from the floor and returns to the dresser to look for shorts or briefs or something. "Don't call me Cupcake," he says in a low, carefully controlled tone. He finds what he's looking for at the back of the bottom drawer and hands both items to Haymitch. "Get dressed, and try to think before you say anything else."

Haymitch snatches the clothes with a violent swipe of one hand. "Screw you, _kid_. Get out."

"Are you going to hit me, Haymitch?"

Haymitch finishes fastening his trousers and sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. "No. _Fuck_. Give me a minute, okay?"

"Okay. I'll be downstairs. It's going to be alright." Peeta leaves before Haymitch breaks down.

987654321

The walk into town had been a good idea. Haymitch seems to have come back to himself. He notices Peeta watching him as they move down the enclosed path and gives him a slightly sardonic smile that is the perfect mixture of friendly familiarity and mild exasperation.

They don't talk. Peeta had the idea of going to the Hob because he could hardly bring Katniss to Haymitch's house with things the way they were. At this time of day, there's a good chance they'll meet her there. Then the three of them will return together. That's the plan, anyway. Both of them understand the unspoken elements well enough.

Peeta wonders how Haymitch thinks they're going to discuss this without Katniss finding out- finding out about Snow's latest cruelties. He frowns to himself. It makes him too uncomfortable to think about it in anything but vague and ominous terms. If they get out of this, Haymitch is going to need someone who can accept what happened to him and help him cope. Not that he has any clue as to how he could help.

"Stop brooding, boy," Haymitch says gruffly. "Katniss is the only thing you have to worry about now, so leave it alone."

"You're right." Peeta smiles dutifully. "And I'm not brooding. I never brood."

Haymitch rolls his eyes. They fall back into the companionable silence that usually surrounds them and Katniss as well, whenever they're outside of Haymitch's house.

"Peeta, stop a minute." Haymitch says quietly, halting and catching Peeta's arm.

"What?" Peeta looks around at the walls of snow and the path stretching out behind and before them, his senses on high alert. Then he answers his own question. "Something's happening."

An unfamiliar sound can be heard ahead of them, a repeated whooshing _crack._ Haymitch takes a single step toward the sound, hackles rising. "We have to find Katniss and get back to the Village. Where would she be?"

"Probably at the Hob." Peeta is about to ask what the sound is when another sound sets both men running.

"_Stop!_" It's Katniss yelling the word, and she's in the middle of whatever's happening. Haymitch is still very fast when he wants to be, and Peeta loses sight of him as he reaches the end of the path and keeps running. A moment later Peeta comes bursting into the clearing and skids to a stop.

What looks like half the town is gathered around the square, and they would be blocking his view if Haymitch hadn't just plowed a path through them. Some of them turn to gawk at the new arrival, but most are still fixated on the spectacle in the town square. Someone is chained to the whipping post, hunched over and bloodied. Haymitch is standing between the post and a Peacekeeper, gesturing. And behind him stands Katniss.

Peeta doesn't waste any more time trying to make sense of the scene. Taking a deep breath, he races towards them at a dead sprint. He stops in front of Haymitch, facing the Peacekeeper and panting slightly. Haymitch immediately grabs Peeta and pushes the teenager behind him with Katniss. Then he goes back to talking to the Peacekeeper.

"Are you sure Snow wants three dead Victors here? Because that's what you're looking at."

His voice is steady and persuasive, but Peeta can sense that he's scared. At Peeta's side, Katniss is tense and watchful. Peeta rolls his shoulders to loosen them and then braces himself. Fighting won't do any of them any good, not with everything stacked against them. It won't save them. He knows that, but he can't keep Katniss from fighting and Katniss is worth dying for.

Thread sneers at the man who had the audacity to get in his way. He hadn't recognized the girl at first, but there's no mistaking Haymitch Abernathy. He'd been briefed on each of the resident Victors en route. According to the report, Haymitch is a drunkard, too addled by his addiction to be much more than an annoyance. The girl is supposed to be the trouble-maker in the group. He'd been told to keep a close eye on her. The boy is sensible and well-behaved, but has an unfortunate tendency to follow Katniss's lead. _Mine rat love_, Thread thinks contemptuously.

And he's barely been here half an hour but here they are, all three of them, making some kind of pathetic stand to save a random dissident from a flogging. Only pampered Capitolites could be made nervous by such creatures. It's clearly past time to show the higher-ups how easily such behavior can be discouraged. It's true that he can't flog Katniss Everdeen, not yet anyway, but he's pretty sure he knows what will work just as well.

"Perhaps the president wouldn't want _three_ dead Victors," Thread says slowly. "Alright, I'm feeling lenient today." He lets his menacing tone give the lie to his words. He stares into Haymitch's eyes long enough to savor the fear he sees there and then bellows his commands to his squad. "Release the prisoner, and put this man in his place. He can have the lashes for both of them, and for the girl, too."

The other Peacekeepers glance uneasily at each other. Haymitch is famous, wealthy, almost an honorary Capitolite. He has a _phone_. It's best to just ignore him as much as possible, lest he take it into his head to go crying to his friends in the Capitol. But now Thread is turning towards them, and Darius lies bloodied and unconscious on the ground.

Before Thread can say anything else two of them move reluctantly towards Haymitch and two others hasten towards the post.

"Take off your shirt," one of the Peacekeepers orders.

"Get away from us, Moen," Katniss growls in warning. "Peeta, get Gale."

"Shut up, Katniss," Haymitch hisses, pushing her behind him again. "Go get your cousin, and go _home_."

"No. We're leaving. Come on." Her voice is unsteady, and she _knows_ they're not all walking away from here. But the Capitol can't _always_ win.

"Your shirt, now, or it will be worse for you," the Peacekeeper demands of Haymitch, as though in scornful reply to Katniss's unspoken conviction.

Haymitch snaps his eyes to the man in front of him and takes off his shirt. His skin instantly prickles with the cold. "Fuck's sake, Peeta, take her back to the Village already."

"He's right. Come on, Katniss." Peeta says quietly. He needs to get her out of here before she really does get herself killed. He'll just have to get her home and hope her mother and Prim can keep her there until this is over.

"No, let them stay," Thread speaks up, his trained voice effortlessly cutting through their pointless quibbling. "This will be instructive for our young Victors."

Haymitch catches Peeta's eyes, and Peeta nods slightly. It's the only reply he can give here, so it will have to do. _I'm sorry. I'll keep Katniss from interfering. I'm sorry._

Then the two Peacekeepers seize Haymitch's arms and roughly shove him over to the post and down onto his knees. They fasten his wrists to the pole above his head, so that there's no way he can move to protect his back once to whip starts falling on him.

"Let him go!" Katniss shrieks, fighting to get free from Peeta. Peeta holds on grimly. If she gets loose now she'll attack one of the Peacekeepers.

"That's enough caterwauling from you," Thread declares. "He's already getting sixty lashes, twenty for each offense. Let's add five more for every word the girl says, and any word Peeta might choose to say."

"Sir," one of the Peacekeepers interjects tensely. It's Moen, the one who had taken Haymitch's shirt. "With respect, sir, sixty lashes would likely prove fatal."

"Well, that would be a pity. I have no desire to kill one of our Victors unless I have to. They're so _rare_ in 12. I will stop at forty if the other two can keep quiet and behave themselves for the duration."

Katniss abruptly stops struggling. She lets Peeta put his arms around her, but she continues to stare at Thread with smoldering hatred. Peeta squeezes her hand, and is immensely relieved when she returns the squeeze after a brief hesitation. He'll get Katniss through this latest horror, and then the two of them will get Haymitch through it. Damage control has become his mind's default setting.

"Let's get started," Thread announces, stepping back. He unfurls his whip and lets the first lash fly. It lands cleanly across the shoulder blades, a good place to start because it can be tricky to hit later when the subject starts cringing and squirming.

_Two._ This time it lands just above the hips.

_Three._ Begin laying down the crosshatch pattern. At this point it becomes a game, to see how neat you can make it in spite of the subject's struggling.

_Four._ Blood begins to flow, obscuring the forming pattern and making the game more complex.

_Five_. Most subjects are screaming by now, but this one hasn't found his voice yet. He will.

_Six_. He had seemed sober enough. He was at least coherent. But with a long time drunk like him you can't always tell. The drink may be dulling it a little for him.

_Seven_. The dissident he had originally been whipping had been screaming like a banshee by this point.

_Eight._ Ah, there we are.

_Nine_. Same spot as the last one, just to hear that lovely scream again.

_Ten_. Moving on, we do have a pattern to build.

_Eleven._ By the time we're done he'll scream at a feather touching his back.

_Twelve_. He lets himself wonder for a few seconds what the girl's screams would have sounded like.

_Thirteen._ Haymitch has gone limp, hanging by his arms.

_Fourteen._ He's still screaming, though.

_Fifteen._ Most of them don't really pass out until sometime around twenty.

_Sixteen._ It's more satisfying to whip men. The barely hidden terror and pathetic defiance in their faces is so much richer than what the women usually offer.

_Seventeen_. But a good work-out with the whip always gets his blood up, and either flavor will do.

_Eighteen_. He notices that Katniss is crying with her face hidden against Peeta's chest.

_Nineteen._ Maybe he should make her watch, but he has gotten into a good rhythm and he doesn't want to pause now.

_Twenty._ Anyway, maybe it's best not to disturb her. She might do something stupid, and he really doesn't want to have to whip Haymitch to death.

_Twenty-one_. Snow probably wouldn't care, now that 12 had two other Victors to take over.

_Twenty-two_. But the other two are hands-off for the time being, until this cockamamie wedding bullshit is over.

_Twenty-three._ Then he'll see how brave the girl is with her own flesh on the line.

_Twenty-four_. Until then, why, he'll just have to use her whipping boy.

_Twenty-five._ Peeta isn't crying. Peeta is staring at him in a way that almost seems insolent.

_Twenty-six. _No screams, this time. Haymitch has finally lost consciousness. Fairly impressive tolerance.

_Twenty-seven_. He hopes Peeta is sensible and well-behaved enough to keep quiet.

_Twenty-eight._ He lands another across the shoulder blades. Haymitch is still enough for that now.

_Twenty-nine._ Another close to the waist. Sometimes that brings them around.

_Thirty._ The subject is still unconscious.

_Thirty-one._ He aims high and the whip strikes across the forearms. Haymitch jerks.

_Thirty-two._ He brings the lash down on Haymitch's upper arms, and Haymitch howls.

_Thirty-three_. Well, he's awake now. Back to that fine pattern.

_Thirty-four._ He's not screaming any longer, but keening: a sound that's captivating in its pathos.

_Thirty-five_. Usually people who have reached the keening stage aren't even aware they're making a sound.

_Thirty-six_. They aren't properly aware of anything, except the pain.

_Thirty-seven._ Sometimes the pain is all they're aware of for days afterward.

_Thirty-eight._ Sometimes they keep keening for days afterward, almost non-stop, whenever they're awake.

_Thirty-nine._ He lays one more across the shoulders.

_Forty. _The last one hit just above the waist.

At last, it is over. Thread steps back with a satisfied smile and flicks the blood off his whip in one smooth motion. Large scarlet roses bloom on the snow near his feet. He coils the whip as he looks to one of his underlings and gives them the nod. The dolt just stands there frozen. Honestly, did old Cray _ever_ do his job around here? "Release him," Thread snaps.

The Peacekeeper scurries forward. It takes him three tries to fit the key into the locked cuffs, and each time he misses he throws a nervous glance at Thread. He unlocks the cuffs and Haymitch drops to the ground like a bag of flour and lies unmoving. He's alive, though. Thread can hear him breathing from where he stands. There'll be no more trouble from this one at least, even if he recovers.

"Clear the square! You're all under curfew! Anyone on the street in fifteen minutes will be shot on sight!"

Peeta is the first to reach Haymitch. He is lying half prone, half on his side. Peeta drops down in front of him and sits back on his heels. Up close, the damage is literally sickening. The only thing Peeta has seen that even compares is his own leg after the Career ran it through with his sword. That memory overlay the present for a queasy moment before he shakes it off. He needs to focus.

"Haymitch, can you hear me? Say something!" There is no reply. His eyes are closed and bloody foam issues from one corner of his mouth. He's quivering, from pain or cold or both. At least the cold is slowing the bleeding.

Someone touches Peeta's shoulder, and he looks up to see Katniss standing behind him looking as queasy as he had felt. "We need something to carry him on," she says.

"Like what? There isn't anything!" Peeta takes a moment to get his voice steady. He looks back down at Haymitch. The blood-covered figure seems to be quivering a little less violently. "Haymitch?" he asks, but there's still no sign the man hears him.

"He's freezing. We have to get him inside," Katniss says. They both look around. They are almost completely alone in the square. A solitary Peacekeeper watches from about ten yards away. All Katniss knows about him is his name- Orin. His expression is stony. When he catches her eyes he deliberately turns away.

"They're all cowards," Katniss says in a low voice.

"None of them could have stopped this."

"They _left_."

Peeta has no reply to that. He pushes it to the back of his mind, where her words catch and cling like nettles.

"_Wake up_," he says desperately. He lifts one of the limp hands out of the snow and digs the knuckle of his thumb into the cold palm.

"_Let go_." It comes out in a rasping sort of hiss that bypasses the vocal cords completely. The eyes stay tightly shut.

"We have to get you up, okay? We have to get you inside."

"Leave." This time the reply is actually spoken, and he pays for the effort. The hand Peeta holds twitches while his free hand digs into the snow. A tear runs down his stubbled cheek.

"How are we going to do this?" Peeta asks Katniss. "Each take an arm?"

"At least we know he won't be too heavy for us that way." Katniss gingerly touches his uppermost arm and then grips it tightly in both hands, grimacing at the tacky feel of drying blood. "He's barely shivering. We have to hurry. Let's sit him up and then lift."

She pulls and Haymitch screams horribly. It actually helps her a little, somehow. Grimly, she hauls him to a sitting position. "Help me, Peeta!"

He continues to scream as they muscle him up enough to get his arms over their shoulders. The two teenagers stagger-step across the square with their burden. He's much harder to move than the last time they did this. He's deadweight this time.

"Is he still alive?" Peeta asks breathlessly as they move through the snow.

Katniss is concentrating on her footing, because if they trip and fall she doubts they'll be able to get him up again. "He's _screaming_," she says shortly. "Keep up."

"He stopped," Peeta says, trying to move faster. "Katniss-" He breaks off, saving his breath. He can't keep up this pace on an artificial leg in the snow while managing this much weight. Saying so would be worse than useless.

Katniss still hears plenty of screaming, but there are too many voices. These are the people who scream in her ears every night when she falls asleep. The thought that they might be dragging a blood-covered corpse back through the snow towards Victor's Village doesn't slow her down at all. He'd still have to be taken in.

Peeta trips, and suddenly Haymitch's whole weight falls on her and then she falls, too. The three of them are half-buried in the snow, and Katniss is suddenly sure it's really only the two of them. Tears cloud her vision and she swipes the back of her hand across her eyes quickly.

"Sorry! Is he-" Peeta is on his knees, leaning over Haymitch's body.

"I don't know. Go get help, alright? I'll stay with him."

"You'd be faster."

Katniss nods, unable to speak anymore. She looks quickly at Haymitch, then turns and runs off toward the archway. Peeta looks after her bitterly. They were so close. The archway is only about forty yards away. But it might as well be forty miles, with the snow and his useless friggin' leg.

He brushes the snow off Haymitch as much as he can. He slides his fingers under the other man's jaw and feels for a pulse, half-expecting some sound, some weak unconscious protest. There is none, but Peeta finds a very slow pulse. He tries to pull Haymitch up out of the snow, but he won't stay up. Peeta lies down beside him and then moves on top of him, holding most of his weight off the other while trying to offer him as much warmth as he can.

"You have to survive, Haymitch. I can't protect her on my own."

Haymitch doesn't hear him. For the moment, he is beyond the reach of Peeta's words. He is driving very fast down an open highway. The fine, familiar taste of liquor is on his tongue. Beside him a petite woman in shiny clothes chatters endlessly on, and he simultaneously wants to kiss her and to stop the truck and demand that she get lost. All of this is alien and bizarre and he wishes he could stay forever. There's something he needs to get back to, but he can't remember what that might be, for the moment.


	8. Family

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: PuzzlesolverDramaqueen, thanks again! Yeah, I doubt he's been entirely sane since his own Games. He's already coming a bit undone. If the story goes in the direction I think it will, he'll likely end up beyond help or hope of recovery. But ultimately it goes where it wills, and if I don't follow I'll get left alone out here in the dark. So I follow, always.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 8**

Katniss comes slamming into the house, and she's already yelling for her mother. On the short run here she has unwillingly become convinced that Haymitch is still alive. If he is, Peeta shouldn't have to watch him die alone.

Elsabet Everdeen comes running into the room, Prim close behind her.

"Katniss, what happened? What's wrong?"

"You have to come, right now. Hurry up," Katniss demands, backing towards the door.

"What is it?" her mother pleads.

"You're all bloody!" Prim cries at the same time, rushing over to help her white-faced sister.

"It's not mine," Katniss reassures her. "Stay here, Prim. I need you to tend to Gale for me, okay? Mom, come _on_." She grabs her mother's hand to pull her out of the house. Prim isn't strong enough to help, so that leaves her mother. Katniss tells herself firmly that she can mostly support Haymitch as long as she has someone to steady him a bit.

Elsabet refuses to move, understanding coming into her sharp eyes. "Prim, go see to Gale," she says firmly. Prim gives them both a worried look before turning and heading back into the kitchen.

"It's Haymitch, isn't it? The men who brought Gale told me. Did they kill him?" Her voice is hard, as hard as her eyes.

"I don't know. Peeta's with him. Come on, why aren't you moving?"

"I'll come. I'll get one of the blankets to carry him in." She turns abruptly and heads for the stairs. "You wait where you are, Katniss. I won't be able to find him on my own if you run off."

Fuming over the delay, Katniss briefly considers finding someone else to help her. Peeta's father would have come with her right away. She should have gone to Peeta's house. "You _want_ him to die," she accuses the woman who is no longer in the room to hear her. "Hurry up!" She looks at the blood on her hands and her arms and her shirt. There's so much of it. The warm, well-lit house feels hostile and not-quite-real. Whose blood is all over her?

Elsabet comes back down the stairs quickly, the heavy, off-white blanket from her bed folded over her arm. She finds Katniss staring at the blood on her hands, frozen. She pauses on the bottom riser, clenching her fists in the soft fabric. She supposes Haymitch probably saved her older daughter, knows he at least helped her survive. But she can't help hating the man a little when she sees Katniss like this, scared and trapped in her mind and seeing who knows what.

"Katniss," she calls out, more sharply than she had intended.

Katniss startles and looks up at her uncomprehendingly.

"Come on, then. We have to get Haymitch."

That's enough to bring her back, this time at least, and she nods tensely. They leave the house together, and at Katniss's urging Elsabet breaks into a jog. It's that or be harried across the snow like a lost goat.

"I won't bring him back to the house if he's dead," she tells her daughter grimly as they run, now, across the snow.

"Fine, don't. If he's dead I'll drag him back by myself," Katniss replies with a scowl.

They can see Peeta and Haymitch now, and a few seconds later they reach them. Peeta is sitting beside Haymitch, his head bowed.

"It's too late. He died a couple of minutes ago," Peeta says tonelessly.

Katniss feels the ground sink out from under her as she falls to her knees. _He was cold, and he was in pain, and his last word was 'leave'._ "Haymitch," she says softly. "They always win."

Elsabet unfolds the blanket next to the body on the snow. "Help me roll him onto this, Peeta."

Peeta kneels beside her and mechanically rolls the limp body onto the blanket by himself.

Elsabet begins trying to resuscitate him as the two teens look on. 'A couple of minutes' isn't that long, and there's a decent chance that this will work. His mouth is bloody and metallic tasting. She's only ever tried this before with victims of mine accidents. It hadn't brought any of them back. In most cases that had probably been a mercy.

There's more physical toughness in this man than he merits, though, maybe because he isn't chronically malnourished and doesn't have lungs that are full of coal dust. He jerks under her hands and then begins to breathe on his own with gratifying swiftness. Elsabet sits back on her heels and spits once into the snow before wiping the residue of blood from her mouth.

"He's alive. Katniss, you get one end of the blanket and I'll get the other. Peeta, you make sure he keeps breathing. If he stops again, you bend back one of his fingers until you get a response, even if you have to break it." She doesn't waste time checking Peeta's response to this instruction. Either he will or he won't.

This time it is Elsabet who sets the swift pace across the commons; he is alive for the moment and so she will try to fix him. Her duty is clear now, and it doesn't matter who he is. Except that this one will wake up ugly and probably undo all her work before anyone can calm him.

Peeta hurries ahead to get the door, and Elsabet and Katniss carry him into the warm house. "Into the kitchen," Elsabet directs, turning down the hall.

There is a fire blazing in the fireplace, a kettle of water boiling over the flames. They have an electric stove now, but when she's under stress Prim always falls back on the way she was taught in the Seam. The twelve-year-old is perched on a chair at the end of the long kitchen table, outwardly composed as she keeps watch over Gale's drugged sleep.

Gale lies prone on the table near the fire, deeply asleep and breathing evenly. His back is covered shoulders to waist with the snow coat, scenting the air with mint. Prim has folded a towel under his cheek as a pillow. He doesn't stir when they come in, but Prim looks up. She stands quickly; ready to step in wherever she's needed.

"I put more water on the fire. It should be ready," she says. "Who is it? What's wrong with him?"

"We'll put him on the floor between the table and the fire. Together now, Katniss. Are you ready?" Elsabet instructs.

"Ready."

They lower the blanket more or less steadily to the floor. Haymitch moans a little but doesn't perceptibly move.

"Alright, we have to roll him onto his belly." Elsabet grips one of the man's shoulders and looks at her eldest daughter. "Get his hip, and we'll roll him on three."

Katniss hesitatingly lays a hand on the hip closest to her, and Elsabet shakes her head. "Go on with you. Prim, help me roll him. And mind, this is probably going to bring him around." Prim kneels beside Katniss, who looks at her gratefully before retreating to stand beside Peeta.

Prim sees who it is now and feels a little thrill of dread. Frankly, Haymitch scares her. Prior to moving to Victor's Village about six weeks ago, she had never seen anyone drunk. So the first time she'd seen Haymitch staggering around the yard of the house next to Peeta's, striking out at inanimate objects with apparent anger an repeatedly falling down, she'd thought he must have gone mad. Katniss had told her how to recognize a mad dog, and this had looked very much like what she'd described. She had locked the doors and ran to get her mother. Elsabet had taken one disgusted look out the window and gone to unlock the doors. "He isn't mad. He's just a fool."

None of Prim's dread shows on her face, or in the confident movement of her hands. She grips his hip on the same side that her mother has hold of his shoulder and counts, "One, two, _three_."

They pull him up and towards them, over onto his belly. Prim's second question is decidedly answered. It's what they did to Gale, but much worse. Strips of his skin, barely anchored to his body, tear off onto the blanket as it pulls away from his back. What skin remains is divided into bloody diamond shapes, cut out on all sides. There are large patches where only glistening red muscle can be seen.

The movement wakes him and he shivers convulsively, hands scrabbling against the bloody blanket. He gets his hands under him and pushes up, gasping repeatedly. _"Fuck,"_ he gets out in a strained voice and then gasps again, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Lie down, Haymitch," Elsabet says firmly.

Haymitch tries to sit up all the way, which doesn't go well. He crashes down onto his side and a scream is wrenched from him. Prim flinches, but not as much as Katniss. He curls up, panting harshly.

"I've got to go," Katniss says quickly to Peeta, already turning towards the door. "I just need some air." She hurries out before Peeta can reply.

"Katniss!" Peeta calls after her, not noticing how Haymitch becomes still and silent for a few seconds. Is she upset enough to leave the Village? What if she is? What if Thread finds her out alone after curfew? But Haymitch has been _dead_. His heart had actually stopped. Peeta looks uncertainly back at the door, his sense of urgency gnawing at him.

"Is he going to live?" he asks Elsabet.

"For the moment," is her only reply.

Peeta looks toward the door again and then back. But he can't wait any longer. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he promises, hoping Haymitch can understand him. Then he hurries out into the biting cold.

Katniss is nowhere to be seen. _Think._ Where would she go?

"Katniss!" Peeta calls. His house, maybe? His parents would have taken her in and tried to console her with food. There's nowhere else for her to have gone, unless she did leave the Village. Feeling a bit panicky, Peeta takes off running for his house.

The house assigned to Peeta, along with his parents and the brother that is still a year away from being old enough to marry, is directly across the commons from the Everdeen house. Haymitch's house is right next door to Peeta's, as though they mean to put males on one side and females on the other just like at the Reapings. Even though there are only three of them, he can't dismiss it as a coincidence. On this particular occasion it does work in his favor. Before he reaches his house he notices that the door to Haymitch's has been left standing wide open.

Rushing headlong into the characteristically untidy hall, Peeta spins around in a circle and calls out again. "Katniss?"

"I'm in here, Peeta," a slightly muffled voice answers.

Almost giddy with relief, Peeta takes a deep breath and latches the front door before going into the den.

"Why is this house so much darker than either of ours?" Katniss asks rhetorically. She's curled up in the brown armchair Haymitch usually favors. Her voice has a catch to it and her eyes are red, but she affects a casual tone.

Peeta shrugs, smiling to try to put her at ease. "I thought you'd left."

"Where would I go? See if I could give the Peacekeepers some more entertainment?" she says bitterly.

"I was just worried."

"They didn't have to do that. All Peacekeepers are scum. I'll kill them if I get the chance." Her voice flips from bitter to faux casual again. "Is he dead?"

"He's still alive." Then, feeling that that statement might not have come across as very reassuring, he quickly adds, "Elsabet says he'll be fine."

Katniss nods. "Well, if anyone can fix him, mom can." She tries to laugh, but it's a poor effort. "He's probably too stubborn to- to not be okay." She bows her head and Peeta hears her sob softly.

He goes to her and leans over the chair to put his arms around her. "It's going to be alright, Katniss."

"No, it isn't!" she cries fervently. "Everything's going to _shit_, Peeta. What will it be next? What will they do to us tomorrow? And what if he dies?"

"I don't know," Peeta murmurs, stroking her back. "We'll think of a way out of this, all of it." He shifts uncomfortably, his artificial leg starting to object to the position. "Move over."

After some maneuvering they both settle in the chair with Katniss half on Peeta's lap.

"So what did he do for two weeks in the Capitol?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't tell me." For the first time since those terrible minutes lying in the snow and waiting for help, it occurs to Peeta that if Haymitch dies the Capitol will come for him and Katniss. He feels like a cad for thinking that way, until he looks into Katniss's inquisitive eyes. Then it seems like the only way he could possibly think. What will they do?

Well, Haymitch simply can't die. He makes himself say it out in his mind, because he deserves to feel shitty about it: _He has to go on being victimized so that Katniss won't be._ Peeta has as little choice about it as Haymitch does, but that doesn't make it any less despicable.

"Seriously?" Katniss looks at him hard. "He wouldn't tell _you_ something? It must be bad."

"You know how he is. If he doesn't want to talk it's pretty much down to derisive snorts and surly grunts."

"Yeah, I know." Katniss rolls her eyes. "How's Gale?"

Peeta tries to ignore the irrational flutter of jealousy. "I didn't ask. He looked alright, didn't he? And Elsabet and Prim didn't seem worried for him."

"I should have stayed with him- with both of them. There was just so much blood. Haymitch smelled of blood."

"Like Snow," Peeta says with perfect understanding.

"All the way back with him, I kept hearing all this screaming. Even after he stopped, you know?" she says forlornly.

"Back in the square, when I first went up to him, for a minute I could see and hear the arena all around me and it was my own wrecked leg I was looking at. Then it was gone again."

"All of us are just so messed up. How can we ever fight them now? Maybe you and I should become drunks, too. Maybe taking the edge off is the best we can hope for."

"I don't like alcohol, and I haven't got the energy to look after _two_ drunks," he says rather sharply.

Katniss sighs and punches his arm lightly. _I didn't mean it._ He relaxes again.

"We should get back," he says. "Your mother will be worried. So will Prim."

Katniss perks up a little. "You're right. Come on, then."

They leave Haymitch's dimly lit house. Outside, darkness has almost completely descended. As they step into Katniss's house, Prim sticks her head out of the kitchen.

"Good, you're back. Mom says for you to stay out of the kitchen for now, Katniss."

"Why?" asks Katniss, taking a couple of steps forward.

"We're still cleaning his back. There's a lot of blood," Prim says. Elsabet calls out, her words indistinct from where Katniss and Peeta stand. Prim ducks back into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.

Katniss looks indecisive. She should go check on Gale. She wants to be there when he wakes up. But the memory of Haymitch's shredded skin is making her feel too closed in, set upon from all sides. She remembers how pieces of it clung to the bloody blanket, creating ghastly strings until they pulled free. It was like watching someone who was already dead decay and crumble apart. She doesn't want to have to look at what they did to him, not again.

"Katniss? Are you okay?" Peeta asks.

"I'm such a coward," she says in a defeated tone.

"No, you're not. You're one of the bravest people I've ever known." Peeta puts his hands on her shoulders and she looks up into his eyes and reads his sincerity there. She lets him wrap his arms around her, and for a second she pretends to believe that he really can fix all the problems with their lives.

"It's not a bad thing to dislike seeing people get hurt," he whispers into her hair.

Katniss nods against his chest. It's not that simple, of course. And even if it is, she's seen too much too still be so affected by suffering.

"Neither of us could have stopped what happened. Haymitch knew that."

"We should have been able to do something, the three of us. They're not all-powerful. I wanted Haymitch to refuse. He said it himself, they wouldn't have dared kill all three of us."

Peeta steps back, shaking his head. "Katniss, no. We can't think that way. They wouldn't have let us defy them in front of the whole district and walk away unscathed. I think they might really have killed Haymitch. And we have families to protect."

"We stood by and let this happen!" Katniss declares furiously. "What if he dies? How will we live with ourselves? Someone's got to show them they can't do this to people, and if not us then who?"

"Please, just calm down. You're right, we have to do something. But we can't do anything tonight. Let's wait until Haymitch recovers. He's our strategist. He'll think of something." Peeta looks into her eyes, pleading. "Promise me you won't go off and attack the Peacekeepers on your own."

Deflated, Katniss turns away. It sounds so stupid when Peeta says it out like that. Attack the Peacekeepers? They'd kill Prim and her mother and Gale, and who knows who else. There are too many of them, and they have all the power. Nothing she can do will make any difference.

"Katniss?" Peeta sounds like he's seriously considering knocking her out and locking her in her bedroom. She knows enough to appreciate that Haymitch would be having very similar ideas if she had said this to him. She turns back around.

"I promise. I'm not going to throw away my life that cheaply."

It's a bit too much in the tone of Haymitch's statement that he wouldn't kill himself, and Peeta is a long way from being fully reassured. But at least she seems unlikely to sneak out of the house tonight and start shooting arrows at the Peacekeepers.

"Are you staying?" Katniss asks.

"Yes, at least until morning." He wants to be there when Haymitch wakes up.

"Let me know if anything happens, okay?"

He nods. "You'll know as soon as I do."

Katniss goes upstairs, starting up in a quick and agile rain of steps and slowing as she begins to habitually keep a wary eye on her surroundings again. Peeta watches her out of sight.

Where would the phone be? He begins a quick search for it, supposing he will find it in the study. That's where the phone is in his house. He's never seen a phone in Haymitch's house so it must be in one of the unused bedrooms over there,

He finds it on the large desk in the study, same as his own. Peeta dials his house and hopes his mother won't answer.

The phone rings twice before an anxious voice says, "Hello?" It's Rye, his older brother.

"It's me, Peeta. I'm at Katniss's house. Could you tell mom and dad I'll be spending the night over here?"

"Yeah, alright. Did something happen? Dad saw a bunch of people go over there earlier, and there's been an announcement on the TV about a curfew. Is Katniss okay?" Like almost everyone in their part of District Twelve, Rye expects Katniss to be at the center of any disturbances.

"She's fine. So am I. A couple of guys got whipped. I'm just helping out for the night."

Here in Victors Village they're fairly isolated. Outside the gates, in the Seam and the Town, everyone will know what happened by now. And if they weren't utterly cowed before, that's likely changed. They will have seen a Peacekeeper threaten to shoot one of their Victors and whip another one almost to death just for getting in the way, in addition to what they'd done to Gale. Peeta hopes they remember that the man being whipped for poaching was trying to feed his hungry family; Katniss's single-handed attempt to fend the vicious bullies off; the three Victors standing together in their brief, doomed moment of defiance. But he knows that all most people will remember about today is that the Peacekeepers can do anything they want.

He says goodbye and hangs up before Rye can ask any more questions. It's time to go see to Haymitch.


	9. Boiled Water and Herbs

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 9**

Peeta lets himself into the kitchen. Haymitch is lying prone again, once more on the gory blanket between the table and the fire. They've undressed him and pulled a second, lighter blanket up to just below his hips, stopping a few inches short of the lowest lash mark. He's propped up on his elbows, head deeply bowed so that his sweaty hair hides his face. Prim is sitting in front of him, holding on to his hands. Elsabet kneels between him and the table, running a wet cloth over his back. Haymitch shivers constantly and flinches away with a muffled cry every time the cloth touches him. As Peeta watches, Haymitch pulls one of his hands towards him. Prim keeps hold of it and pulls it back.

"No. Hold still, Haymitch. We're trying to help." Prim says in a slow, steady voice.

Haymitch doesn't reply in words, but he lets her hold his hands pinned to the floor in front of him. Peeta takes this as a good sign. If he was in a state like he'd been at his house this morning, or worse, there's no way Prim could have kept his hands there. Elsabet has tasked the girl with keeping Haymitch from trying to sit up again.

"Tell me what I can do to help," Peeta says.

"Get the bottle of liquor from the pantry. It's on the top shelf, in the back," Elsabet orders.

Peeta retrieves the bottle, which is slightly less than half full. Elsabet accepts it and pours some onto a clean cloth.

"This is going to hurt like hell. If we're lucky, he'll pass out." She looks down at her patient with tight lips and narrowed eyes, as though doubting that either of them will ever be such a thing as 'lucky'. She shakes her head and motions sharply to her younger daughter. "Move away from him, Prim." Even in this state, he can probably still strike out pretty hard.

"I'll hold him," Peeta says. "Just give me a minute." He takes Prim's place and wraps his large hands around Haymitch's wrists. "Haymitch, are you still with us?" He reaches for Haymitch's chin, intending to get eye contact and try to talk him through the application of the alcohol. Haymitch snaps his head away and then bites Peeta's fingers, grinding his teeth into them. Yelping in surprise and pain, Peeta jerks his hand free. Large drop of blood fly off as he shakes it. Cursing, he catches Haymitch's wrists again just in time to prevent the man from pushing himself up. The bitten fingers don't seem to want to move properly and his hand is slick with blood. He puts his good leg across Haymitch's forearms, pressing his knee into one and resting most of his weight on the other.

"I've got him. Go ahead." Peeta braces himself.

Haymitch screams and jerks as the alcohol touches him. Elsabet lays the saturated cloths over his back, lifting them to apply more alcohol and laying them down again.

Haymitch lays his head down on the blanket, tucking his chin towards his shoulder. After the initial scream he is mostly silent. Every minute or so he draws in a deep breath and lets it out with a pained hiss. He's slowing his breathing as much as possible- holding his breath, really- in an effort to remain absolutely still.

"Alright, that should kill just about anything on him. I'll apply the snow coat now, while he's quiet. You'd best have Prim disinfect that bite."

Haymitch looks even worse washed clean of all the blood that had been partially hidden his injuries. He lies flat now, his head turned away from the fire and his eyes closed. His mouth is open as he breathes deeply and evenly. Blood stains his lips and chin. Peeta wants to wipe the blood away but he's scared he'll get the same reaction as last time. Elsabet clearly has the same thought, because she's ignoring the mess. She fishes a large cloth out of a pot of recently boiled water and wrings it out before spreading it over Haymitch's back from his waist to his shoulders. It looks like it was once part of a sheet. She looks up from putting on a layer of faintly green snow to say, "Don't touch anywhere near his face, Prim. He bites."

"I know, mom." Prim examines Peeta's hand, turning it over and straightening the fingers as Peeta grits his teeth. "Looks like you're for the alcohol, too," she says sympathetically. She expertly disinfects the bite and bandages his hand. "That will need to be checked tomorrow morning."

"Thanks," Peeta tells her. "And thanks for helping him."

Prim looks away, slightly uncomfortable with the gratitude. "Of course. We're healers."

Peeta nods and goes to sit beside Haymitch.

"Haymitch?" There's no response; just the slow, deep breaths. "It's me, Peeta. Can you hear me?"

Haymitch moves his head in a minute nod, not lifting it off the blanket.

"Open your eyes, okay? Can you do that?"

"Leave him alone," Elsabet says, coming back in after emptying two of the pots that had held bloody water. "If he can sleep, all the better."

"I need to know he's going to be okay."

"He might not be. Let him sleep now."

"Just give me a minute! Please."

Elsabet doesn't bother to say anything else. It'll be faster to just let Peeta satisfy himself.

Peeta looks down at Haymitch and catches himself about to nudge the man. He pulls his hand back short of touching the mass of torn flesh that used to be Haymitch's shoulder.

"Haymitch, open your eyes, okay? Just for a minute," he coaxes.

Haymitch slits his eyes open. His vision is blurred, but he can make out Peeta's form beside him. His heart pounds a steady drumbeat in his ears and his sight brightens and darkens in time with it. He tries to say something to calm Peeta, because the boy should be with Katniss instead of hovering over him like this. Everything is spiraling down, and doesn't Peeta understand _yet_ that at least one of them should be with the girl? He can't speak, so he forces his eyes the rest of the way open against the pounding and the light. He twitches one corner of his mouth up and winks.

Peeta smiles back, surprised and then just relieved. It doesn't worry him when the gray eyes slip closed again and stay closed. "I'll come back later," he promises, and then goes off to tell Katniss he's alright.

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The early morning sun slants through the window and falls across Peeta's eyes. Still mostly asleep, he turns over on the couch. But it's no use, really. He's always been a light sleeper, and the day has clearly started. With a groan, he opens his eyes. He had been having a nightmare, but he can't remember what it was this time. All he remembers is a sense of dread, and that could be in relation to almost anything that's happened to him in the last three months or so.

The teenager rolls over onto his back and indulges in a few minutes of contemplation. It's surreal how fast everything has changed. Just a few months ago he'd been a normal guy, living in Town and helping out at his family's bakery before and after school each day. Katniss had been the beautiful and forever unattainable dream girl he stole looks at across the classroom. He hadn't known Haymitch at all, except as a drunkard who made a spectacle of himself once a year at the Reaping.

Three months ago a challenge had been creating a particularly beautiful scene on a birthday cake for the mayor's daughter. Lying here in the cold early morning sunlight, that seems rather profound. He says it aloud, although he keeps his voice low.

"Three months ago my biggest challenge was Madge Undersee's birthday cake."

He laughs at himself and sits up. That's enough self-indulgence. He has real challenges now. And, grim as things are in many ways, he knows he wouldn't go back. He had been relatively safe once, but he had also been bored and trapped and condemned to a life that was largely scripted out for him and just the same as almost everybody else's. Now he at least has a chance to make it count for something. And even if it proves impossible to change the world, he has people who depend on him now.

He heads into the kitchen to check on Haymitch, making a mental note to bring him some liquor afterwards. The last thing he needs right now is withdrawal symptoms.

He finds Katniss asleep with her head resting on the kitchen table next to Gale. Gale is awake, watching her sleep with a look of adoration. Peeta quashes an unkind impulse to wake her up at once. Instead he gives Gale a little wave. Gale looks much better this morning. His eyes are bright and alert, and he lifts one hand at Peeta in reply. And then of course there's that smile as his eyes turn back to Katniss.

Peeta walks around the table as quietly as he can and sits down next to Haymitch. He's sleeping and he looks peaceful. A fresh layer of snow coat has been put on him recently, and the light blanket has been pulled up above his waist so that the top of it overlaps the dressing. His mouth is still covered in dried blood, and Peeta gets up and hunts around for a cloth. He wets the corner of a hand towel and cautiously dabs at the blood. There's no response, so Peeta cleans the blood off thoroughly, having to scrub a little where it's dried into the stubble on his chin.

"There, that's better," he whispers, mindful of waking Katniss. He sets the cloth aside and takes one of Haymitch's hands. The hand is limp and very warm in his. Peeta notices that Haymitch's face is flushed, and he frowns. Maybe Haymitch shouldn't be so close to the fire. He squeezes the limp hand in reassurance and lays his other hand along Haymitch's forehead. The man is burning up.

"Shit," Peeta curses under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Katniss asks, startling him. She's come to stand a few feet away, looking down at them.

"Help me move him. He's too hot. We need to put him further from the fire," Peeta says urgently.

"Alright." Katniss kneels and gathers up one end of the blanket in her hands. Peeta takes the other and they lift the blanket with Haymitch in it in an unsteady, uncoordinated heave.

"Other side of the table," Peeta says, and they make their way awkwardly around the corner.

Gale has propped himself up on his elbows and is watching the proceedings. "You two are going to drop him," he says with some alarm.

They get around the table and set Haymitch down with a dull thump that makes Gale wince in sympathy. "Wow, Catnip, you're really not cut out for this patient care stuff," he teases.

"Yeah, well, the _good_ healers left him practically on top of the fire all night," she replies in kind.

"He's really hot," Peeta says worriedly. He's already sitting beside Haymitch on the floor again. Haymitch hasn't responded at all to the none-too-gentle move. Peeta slides his fingers along Haymitch's neck, hunting a pulse. "Katniss, come feel this. It's not supposed to be that fast, is it?"

Katniss shakes her head, not making any move to join Peeta. "I'm going to get mom." She hurries out of the room.

"What's up?" Gale asks, watching Peeta.

"I think he's feverish," Peeta answers. Fever means infection, but he doesn't say this. He also doesn't say that infection means death. They both know it. Instead, Peeta takes Haymitch's hand again and turns it so that he can dig the knuckle of his thumb into the center of Haymitch's palm. "Come on, Haymitch, wake up." There's nothing at all.

"You lie back down, Gale," a stern voice says. Elsabet has arrived in time to see Gale painfully pushing himself up from the table. She comes and drops down next to Peeta. Her capable hands feel forehead and cheeks and check the pulse in a series of practiced movements. Elsabet claps her hands in front of Haymitch's closed eyes, looking for a blink. She uses her thumb to pull up one of his eyelids and sighs when she meets with the normal resistance and the eye blinks rapidly before falling closed again. "Well, there's that at least," she mutters.

She pulls up the corner of the cloth covering Haymitch's back. The scattered bits of skin have turned a dark, bruised color. As Peeta watches, she leans forward and sniffs at the wounds. Elsabet removes the covering completely, depositing it on the blanket next to Haymitch's feet. Everywhere, raw bloody red alternates with purplish black. She sniffs again, even though she knows it will be the same lower down. She looks over at Peeta and shakes her head.

"He's dying."

Her voice is matter-of-fact, and only someone who knew her very well indeed could have discerned the unhappiness in her light blue eyes. Haymitch had largely been a weak man. But he had never been truly bad, even after everything that had happened. A whole lifetime ago, she and Peeta's father had struggled to bring him back from near-fatal alcohol poisoning. That had been only a few days after his family and the girl he'd been seeing had died suddenly of what the Peacekeepers said was the flu- the bodies immediately taken away 'for the safety of the citizens'. Shortly after that he'd secluded himself in the Village. Once a year she'd seen him up on stage in front of the tense crowd and had thus known that he was still alive. And now he's dying on her kitchen floor while Peeta looks at her blankly.

"He _can't_ be dying," Peeta says. Reality is already starting to break through his veneer of denial.

"He is. His back is infected. The skin is rotting. I'm sorry, Peeta. We did all we could, but he was just too badly hurt. He's not in any pain." If he is, he's beyond the ability to give any sign of it. And if he does start making noise she'll give him an injection of morphling.

"How long?" Peeta picks up one of Haymitch's hands, and Elsabet watches him trying not to cry.

"A few hours, maybe a little longer. He'll be gone before sundown."

"Okay." Peeta gazes down at the man, squeezing his hand. He chokes back a sob and takes a couple of deep breaths. When he's sure his voice will be steady he says, "Can we move him? He shouldn't be-" Peeta breaks off and bows his head.

"We'll move him to my room." Katniss speaks for the first time since Elsabet arrived. She has been hanging back, processing the scene in makeshift privacy. She's furious at this whole stupid, pointless situation: the sadistic, bullying Peacekeepers; the people she had known all her life who had run like rabbits; herself, Peeta, even Haymitch. She comes forward quickly and eases the light blanket up to Haymitch's neck. "I'll get this end of the blanket and you get the other. We'll go slowly."

"It won't do any good," Elsabet says. "He doesn't know where he is, anyway."

"He's not going to die lying on the kitchen floor like a dog," Katniss says fiercely. "Ready, Peeta?"

Katniss and Peeta lift the blanket with Haymitch in it one more time and Katniss slowly leads them upstairs and into her room. They lower their unmoving burden onto the bed. Peeta brushes Haymitch's golden hair out of his face. He sits down on the floor so that he's at eye level with Haymitch and takes his hand again. Katniss sits down beside him, and together they grieve.

"Typical that his last words to me would be 'shut up'", Katniss scoffs.

"I guess the last thing he said to me was 'leave'", Peeta replies after a moment's consideration. "Last night… he knew me, mostly, but I don't think he could talk."

Katniss sighs and scrubs a hand across her eyes in an impatient gesture. "I'm not going to sit here reminiscing about him and crying like- like some defeated _victim_. We're _not_ defeated yet." She glares at Peeta, sees no fight there. Her wrath-filled gaze turns to Haymitch, but that's no good. He certainly won't give her the fight she needs. _Fucking useless, both of them_, she declares silently.

"Damn you, Haymitch," she hisses, and jumps to her feet. "I'm calling the Capitol."

"What? Why?" Peeta asks, standing and snagging her arm before she makes it out of the room.

"What else am I supposed to do? Look at us, Peeta! He'd hate this. I said he shouldn't die lying on the floor like a dog, but mom was closer to the mark this time. If nothing can be done he'd want to crawl off somewhere by himself and die alone. If something can be done, I'm going to do it." She looks back over at Haymitch. "Either way, I'm leaving you alone, you surly old drunk. Maybe someday you can return the favor."

With those parting words she disappears through the door. Peeta stares after her for a moment. Then he returns to his place and takes Haymitch's hand again.


	10. New Deal

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 10  
**

She calls Cinna because his is the only number she knows by heart. She'd also been given Effie's number, but that had seemed like entirely useless information. Was she expected to call her escort and discuss posture or table manners some fine evening?

Katniss dials the number with sharp jabs of her finger and clutches the phone too tightly as she listens to the ringing.

"Hello there, you've got Cinna," says the smooth, slightly alluring voice, and Katniss sinks down into the chair behind the desk.

"Cinna? It's me. Katniss."

There's a pause, and when Cinna speaks again it's in the steady, reassuring tone that Katniss knows so well. You can breathe in strength from listening to some people. Katniss takes a deep breath.

"What's wrong, Katniss? Tell me how I can help."

"Haymitch is very sick. The Peacekeepers went at him yesterday. My mom says he's dying. Can someone come get him?" she says in a rush.

"Wait. The Peacekeepers 'went at him'? How do you mean?"

"They whipped him. What else? We can't save him here. All we have is snow and herbs. His skin is rotting."

"I see. Hold on, Katniss. I'll work something out. Are you and Peeta alright?"

"Yeah, we're okay. They didn't dare hurt _us_."

"Good. I'll call you back. Keep your heads down and stay where you are. Tell Peeta that, too. Goodbye for now." His voice subtly changes again as he delivers his habitual sign off. The phone clicks and Katniss hangs up and sits back to wait.

She keeps expecting Peeta to come after her, but maybe he decided to stay with Haymitch. Well, Haymitch always liked Peeta best. He might not be so bothered by Peeta's presence, although Katniss feels sure he'd never willingly allow anyone to hold his hand.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when the phone rings.

"Hello? Cinna?"

"They're sending a hovercraft to bring him to Victors Hospital. It will be there in about four hours. Just leave Haymitch where he is until then and try to keep him alive."

"Okay." Katniss feels her hope rising again. "Can they save him?"

"If he's still breathing when they get there, almost certainly. They're used to dealing with horrific injuries, as well as dehydration and exposure."

Katniss tries hard not to envision the conditions some of the past Victors had been in when the trumpets sounded and the hovercraft landed to collect them. Then she switches all her mental energy to willing away the image of Peeta in the last few hours before their Games had ended.

"Katniss, this is important. You and Peeta stay in 12. Don't go with Haymitch. If they try to tell you to get on the hovercraft, you both have to refuse. They can't have the authorization to make you come yet, there hasn't been time enough. Listen, everything Haymitch has gone through has been to protect you two. You have to stay in 12."

"We'll stay here," Katniss promises. She hangs up the phone and thinks about whoever comes for Haymitch not having the authority to take her and Peeta _yet._ What did Haymitch do to keep them away from the Capitol? That sounded like the deal was off because he was hurt.

She pushes open the door to her room. Peeta looks up, and the misery in his eyes lifts slightly at the sight of her.

"The Capitol is sending a hovercraft for him. We have to keep him alive for the next four hours."

Peeta's eyes widen in surprise. He looks at Haymitch. Rationally he knows he imagined the flinch at the word 'Capitol'. Haymitch probably can't even hear them, much less understand. He squeezes Haymitch's hand. _Sorry. There's no other option. You're going to be okay._

"Can they save him?"

"Cinna thinks they can."

"Then we'll make sure he holds on until they get here," Peeta says in his old firm, obey-me voice.

Katniss rolls her eyes a little. Just like that, huh, Peeta? Never mind that he doesn't hear you, or that he's unconscious. Or was the obey-me voice meant for _her_ this time? She looks up sharply, ready to nip that in the bud, but Peeta isn't looking at her. Alright, then.

Imperious voice or not, Haymitch is breathing steadily and she just can't believe that someone that stubborn will let himself die mere hours before help arrives.

"Cinna said we can't go with him. We have to stay here."

"I think you should stay here. You have to protect-"

"No, Peeta," she interrupts. "Both of us. Either we both stay, or we both go."

Peeta looks away from her. "Katniss…"

"Cinna all but said that if we went with Haymitch, Snow would start selling us. We _can't_ go."

Peeta swallows, nods. "Okay. You're right. I couldn't protect him anyway."

"Protect him from what?"

"You know what Victors Hospital is like," Peeta says tightly. "They'll strap him down so he can't move. Whatever it is he dreams about, I doubt waking up unable to move is going to help matters."

Katniss shakes her head. "Cinna said they don't have the authority to take us _yet_. What did he do while he was in the Capitol?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't talk about it," Peeta tells her again.

"I'll fight them," Katniss hisses. "Bastards. They all deserve to die."

"It won't come to that, Katniss. I promise. I'll never let them do that to you."

Katniss gives him a grateful smile and then impulsively embraces him.

For four hours they keep their vigil next to the bed. They watch Haymitch so they don't have to look at each other. With the blanket pulled up over his shoulders he could be just sleeping. In all that time, the steady rhythm of inhale and exhale only varies once: he makes a series of chuffing sounds, like weak coughing. Peeta takes his hand again and tells him to just relax and breathe. Haymitch settles back down after a moment, pulled through by Peeta's will or his own stubbornness.

They talk about how Gale's doing: well, much improved from last night. Katniss doesn't know how many lashes he got. Thread had already started when she got there.

They drift into silence. Every other topic that comes to mind makes Peeta feel uneasy.

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This time he feels a sort of mesmerized dread. He struggles to wake up, to open his eyes, but it's like he can't remember how. His back and his arms throb hotly. It's not pain, or not really, more an uncomfortable sensation of warmth. Something is moving over him, something separate and alive, and it is the source of his nameless dread.

He begins to shudder, but he still can't wake up. He's lying on a bed and all around him the squirrels come. They're swarming up the bedposts, and then they begin to drop from the ceiling. He can feel their sharp teeth as they begin to tear into his back.

Gray eyes snap open and he gasps. "S'okay, just a dream, just a dream." He recites the mantra rapidly and unthinkingly, white noise to calm him down so that he won't scream. "Just a dream, s'okay, just a dream…"

Then he feels the movement again, and the shiny gold face of the squirrel is peering at him upside down from barely three inches away, because it's _sitting on his head_.

He screams and screams, shaking his head frantically, trying to bat the loathsome thing away with arms that still won't move.

"Just a dream, my boy," someone says from quite nearby. The voice isn't loud, but it has an arresting quality. It is overtly friendly, even paternal, and slightly menacing- the voice of a third rate god.

It breaks through, and the squirrel vanishes at once. Seconds later the hand is back on his head, stroking through his hair. He lies very, very still. This close, the smell of blood and roses is nauseating.

"Brings back memories, doesn't it, Haymitch?" the bastard says meditatively.

Hell is repetition.

"You killed them," he says lowly.

"Killed whom?" the monster asks, pleasant and curious, just making a bit of conversation. And all the while the hand, the horrible reeking hand, is on him, moving in his hair like a dying fish. The ghosts gather behind his closed eyelids, crowd around him and beg him to save them.

Hell is repetition.

"_You_ killed your family, with your little stunt in the arena. _You_ killed them, Haymitch. Say it."

"I killed them," he admits dully. He lies there unmoving, a rotting husk.

Snow looks down at him and tuts. The boy is laid out prone, naked; strapped down at the wrists, lower thighs, and ankles. His back is healing well, but it's still very torn up and painful-looking. Now if only Haymitch were thirty years younger, twenty-five in a pinch. They outgrow their beauty so quickly. Such a waste.

He lets the boy drown in his guilt and misery for a few more minutes anyway; stroking his head and getting a little rush from the power such a simple gesture has over him. At length he stops.

"My boy, are you too addled to understand me?"

"I understand you," Haymitch replies. He tries to gather himself. For the first time he realizes that he is naked and strapped down. He shudders again. _Please, don't let him touch me anymore._

"Good. Very good. You're in the Capitol, at Victors Hospital. You won't remember the trip here, I suppose?" Snow inquires idly.

Haymitch watches him through narrowed eyes. He is painfully aware of the dreadful vulnerability of his current position, but there's never any real security in Snow's presence anyway. This just makes it way too obvious. Snow's Advisor in Charge of Psychological Warfare (Haymitch is certain such a personage must exist) has gotten a little trigger happy this time. In spite of that he has to focus, because this is where Snow reveals the next stage of the Games.

Receiving no answer, Snow continues his monologue. "Your friends with their boiled water and their herbs couldn't keep an infection from developing in some of the wounds on your back. It became quite serious. I was inclined to let you die, but you've been too profitable recently to discard. So, here you are. You've been unconscious for the last three days."

As the old devil talks it seems to Haymitch that he remembers some of it, in flashes and in moments. He recalls distant, ever-present pain and a room filled with birds.

"But now that you're back among the living, how would you like some visitors, my boy?"

Here the monologue wends to a stop. It's clear that he is required to say something in response to the faux question. Haymitch searches his mind, trying to see the next moves. Who would Snow send to him here in Victors Hospital?

Who would Snow leave him to when he's naked, strapped down, and utterly defenseless?

Well, that was easy. And why not? He feels a novel sense of detachment at the idea. Being strapped down while some damn Capitolite assaults him may actually be less unbearable than having no choice but to hold still for it. At worst, what's about to happen is nothing new.

"Fine," he says with resignation.

"Excellent! That's the spirit, my boy!"

Haymitch wonders if Snow is actively enjoying using that demeaning moniker or if it's just the address that comes to mind for a male from the outer districts. Wenceslas had called him 'boy', too. Not quite the same, but he decides that's probably just how Capitolites think.

"Of course, you won't be up to entertaining your usual companions for another couple of weeks. Until then, I can arrange for your two children to visit you often. That is, whenever they're not otherwise occupied."

Haymitch recoils as much as he can and the edges of the straps dig into his wrists and his legs. "Katniss and Peeta? Where are they? Please-" He catches his lower lip between his teeth and unknowingly begins to gnaw on it. His eyes are stinging.

"Yes, the Star-Crossed Lovers themselves. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have fallen into the unenviable position of becoming your surrogate family. They'll be arriving tonight on the train. I'll send them in to say hello before they go on to their respective appointments."

"Why? I did everything you wanted!" He forces himself not to beg, because there isn't a hope in hell that it would move this monster. 'People begging for mercy' is undoubtedly a big part of the background music of this man's life.

"Yes, you did, didn't you? And you were very good at it. Interest in you was still high. You might have been entertainment enough for a year, or even two years. But my Capitolites have short attention spans, and your foolish stunt has taken you out of commission for the next two weeks. So your children will have to serve in your place." Snow sits back in the velvet cushioned chair and smiles contentedly. He rather hopes Haymitch will cry now. He might enjoy watching that for a minute or two.

Haymitch feels a cry of despair building up in his throat, heavy and hard to breathe around. Once he voices it he won't be able to stop. And he'll lose. Tears, sobs, screams- these will all make about as much of an impression on Snow as begging would have. It's check, and his only chance is to grab the monster's attention. His sharp mind once saved his life at the expense of killing everything he had to live for. He's still here, though, so he bends his mind toward Snow. _Think._

He turns his face into the pillow and lets loose one strangled canine whine, a howl cut off almost at once. Then he looks at Snow again, dry-eyed, and smirks.

"Katniss is pregnant."

Snow's eyes widen for just a second. He rocks back, one hand going to his white beard. Neither man says a word for a long time.

Eons later, Snow says, "Is she indeed?"

Haymitch scoffs. "Teenagers, you know. They've all the self-control of jack rabbits. I guess it doesn't say much for my parenting skills." He bares his teeth in a mocking smile. "I was probably drunk when it happened."

"And is Peeta the sire?"

"So they tell me," Haymitch replies.

"I hope so, for her sake. If not, both she and the interloper will be very sorry." Snow looks at Haymitch with the intensity of a snake hypnotizing its prey. "Speaking of those prone to foolish behavior, _you_ didn't father it on her, did you?"

"_What?_" Haymitch decides the best reply to this is the incredulous derision that the suggestion initially makes him feel. He rolls his eyes. "She's nowhere near that hard up, believe me."

"Good. We can find out the paternity very easily, you know. If the whelp proved to be yours, I'd have you castrated."

"It's _not_ mine."

"Well, this is an interesting development," Snow says.

Haymitch just bets it is. He can see the anticipation in the old man's eyes. The fact is that it's very rare for Victors to produce children. This is downplayed in the Capitol, while the few Victor children that do exist are featured heavily each year in the Games fanfare. The concept seems to be similar to that of livestock keepers: if they're breeding they're content, and that's good publicity for the system.

Snow gets up and begins to pace around the small room. Since the bed is situated in the center of what space there is, he ends up circling it. Haymitch feels his heart speeding up again. He stays very still. The kids are all that matter, now.

"There'll need to be a wedding very soon, before our girl begins to show. I'll have film crews in every week to document the happy couple. They'll need their own house." Snow snaps his fingers. "Their handlers will have to be instructed to send them back to 12. That's the first thing." He laughs. "Oh yes, we mustn't forget that."

Haymitch relaxes, closing his gray eyes for a minute. This path is dangerous, too. He's almost sure Katniss is still a virgin. And if she isn't, it won't be due to Peeta. The kids will hate this, and Katniss might hate him. But never mind that now. They don't know. Unbidden images and sensations flood his mind as his body begins to shudder. They don't have the slightest fucking idea. And as long as he's still drawing breath they never will.

His thoughts come to a screeching halt and his eyes fly open as something touches the backs of his legs and his ass. His mind identifies the weight as squirrels. Fully awake this time, he shakes his head as though to dislodge his traitorous, fractured brain. _Not squirrels. Not. _He pushes himself up as much as he can and cranes his neck to look over his shoulder.

It's an off-white blanket, now covering him from the waist down.

"You were shivering," Snow remarks with a smile that says he knows exactly how unsettling the unexpected touch of the blanket was.

It's the first look Haymitch has gotten at his back since Thread flayed most of the flesh off of it. He can't see much, just the bit right above his waist. That small area is entirely bright red and deep, glistening pink. Is there any skin left at all? He can't see any. The feeling of uncomfortable heat gets stronger just from looking at it, but it still doesn't approach the agony he should be feeling. They must have him on heavy pain-killers.

How long had Elsabet managed to keep him alive like this in her fire-warm kitchen? And all the while his screams must have been audible throughout the whole damn Village. He can't remember, but once the infection took hold he had probably been reduced to a gibbering madman. Hells bells, why had she bothered?

"You're not very pretty right now, my boy. Rest up, you have a lot to do in the near future." Snow walks over to the door, but hesitates with his hand hovering over the call button. He comes back and sits down in the chair again.

"My boy… the attendants will hold off on the pregnancy test for now. A crew will be sent to twelve in a weeks' time to start planning the wedding. That will be soon enough to test her. She had better test positive."

Fuck, he should have seen that glaring flaw in the plan. Check, again. Is Snow just toying with him?

In District Twelve, a woman knows she's pregnant when she misses her period. Or, if getting enough food is a problem for her and missing her period isn't all that unusual, she finds out when she begins to show. Everyone over ten knows that. He'd forgotten that in the Capitol they have much quicker ways of knowing.

"I guess that's up to her and the boy, seeing as I'm stuck here," he ventures, testing the waters.

"No, you have too much to do to waste time lying in bed. You'll be going back to 12 this evening or early tomorrow morning, on the same train as your children. Your handler and a few medics will go with you to make sure you heal properly."

Balthamos is going to twelve with him. He's going to be tortured in his own house, less than a hundred yards from the kids.


	11. Trapped

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 11**

Shortly after the train gets underway his caretakers leave him alone in his cabin. As soon as they're gone Haymitch braces his hands under his chest and pushes himself up in the bed. His arms shake violently with the effort, and he has to lean forward and hang his head until the room stops spinning. '_In no condition to be moved'_, that had been the sniffed verdict of the one who had jabbed the needle into his neck right before they'd left. He's dismayed at how weak and off-balance he feels. Nothing hurts, but every cell in his body screams for him to lie back down. There's no pain, but at the same time there's a palpable feeling of _suppressed_ pain.

He wears a blue satin robe with the seal of Panem embroidered on the left side in gold thread, so that it rests right over his heart. The robe is tied loosely at the waist. The only other thing he is wearing is a pair of black silk briefs. He's very much aware of just how much of a wanton whore he looks like right now, especially when you add in being stoned on pain meds. If there are actual clothes in the cabin, he doesn't have the energy to find them.

The stuff they put on his back must have had a numbing agent in it. At first it had felt cold and wet and somehow heavy, like a load of smooth river stones pressing against him. Now he can't feel anything at all from shoulders to waist. It's unsettling, but at least he can breathe without crying.

Katniss opens the door a crack, just enough to slip through and push it shut again behind her. She pauses inside the door, looking at him without a word. He can see her trying to hold herself together, and what if he's too late? Her eyes are over-bright and her hands twitch at her sides. Picture of a girl at a loss for words, actions, everything.

He wants to get up and go to her, but he's weak and unsteady from the wounds and the drugs and the aftermath. He's afraid he would fall, and if he did she might bolt like a wild animal.

"Come here, girl," he says instead. She shakes her head once, but comes to him even so. Her hesitance flees as she reaches him, and she sits down beside him on the bed and puts her arms around him and lays her head against his chest. Haymitch just holds her and strokes her back. _Too late, too late, too late._

"Katniss, fuck, I'm so sorry," he whispers.

She nods without looking up. Why won't she say anything? He makes himself ask.

"Did they hurt you?"

"No," she says finally. She draws back so she can look him in the eye, pushes lightly against his chest to distance herself. "They were going to. But when we got to the Capitol they said we were going back home. What did you do?"

"Where's Peeta?" he asks, looking around the room.

"He was in the observation car. I wanted to come alone. I thought you might be…"

He waits, not understanding.

"Dead." _Oh. That._

She hurries on: "When we last saw you, you wouldn't wake up and your skin was rotting off. Then three days after they took you away they showed up to collect us. We both thought you had died. Peeta's been nearly catatonic."

Haymitch shakes his head, bewildered as usual by the fact that Peeta really does give a damn about him. "Caring about me is going to get that boy into a world of trouble someday."

Katniss waves this aside as something neither of them can do anything about. "You are okay, aren't you? I mean, can you walk?"

He rolls his eyes. "_Katniss._ I'm stoned on pain meds, half drunk, and apparently being weaned off something called Ciprolen. Yeah, I can walk, at least until I fall on my ass."

"I'm so glad you're alive," she says sarcastically.

"Go on, go get your much better half," he tells her with a manufactured smile. He has to tell them. So how is he supposed to tell a pair of sixteen year old virgins that they've been ordered to breed immediately?

There's nowhere near enough time to prepare himself for seeing Peeta again. Katniss… seeing her is like coming home. She and he- the two of them understand the basics: never admit that you're scared; distance is the only way to deal with all the shit; the light you see way out there is only the first tendril of the flames coming to engulf you. In a moment of sparkling clarity, he understands that when the time comes for him to kill himself she won't stand in his way.

Peeta comes into the room like an avalanche, unstoppable and totally ignorant of the basics- also scarily quick. He seems to just disappear from the door and reappear beside Haymitch on the bed. It makes Haymitch think that he's a lot more stoned than he was even a few minutes ago. Careful, now…

Peeta hugs him crushingly, then draws away and regards him with sharp eyes. "Are you okay? You're shaking. Should you be sitting up?"

"I'm fine. I can't even feel it right now."

"That doesn't mean you're fine," Peeta returns promptly. "Lie down, okay?"

Haymitch slants him an incredulous look and then turns to Katniss. "How do you stand the constant fussing?"

Katniss shrugs. "Ignore it, mostly."

"Don't make light of this," Peeta says, scowling. "You have no idea what it was like to watch Thread whipping you and be so _helpless_ to do anything."

"No, but I'd guess it was a goddamn picnic compared to being the one cuffed to the fucking post," Haymitch growls. What he remembers most is screaming. The memory of screaming is worse than the recollection of the agony. He'd tried so hard to keep quiet. They should never have seen him like that. Damn it. No wonder Peeta treats him like a starving mongrel with a busted leg.

"I would have taken your place if I could have. Nothing could be worse than watching that happen."

"Bullshit. You have a power fetish. Anything that makes me more pathetic and needy is fine with you because on some level it gets you off, doesn't it?"

"No." Peeta shakes his head in vehement denial of the ugly accusation. "Haymitch, you don't really believe that. Look." He hesitates, trying to think of another way to say this. "Not everything is about sex."

"What's going on?" Katniss breaks in. "Please, Haymitch, just tell us. Tell us why they're letting us go home."

Haymitch looks at her scornfully. "You can't possibly be that naïve. You _know._ Stop screwing with me."

"Be quiet," Peeta says with a quick look towards Katniss. "You're not thinking straight."

Haymitch's gray eyes move between them for a minute. He shrugs- and nearly falls down as the simple movement causes his entire back to painlessly tighten and twist sideways.

"Lie down," Peeta insists, and now there's a hand on the back of his neck pushing him down onto the bed as another hand pulls away the arm he'd been leaning his weight on. He's too dizzy not to go along with the hands and the voice.

"Sit down, you two," he says from the pillow. "Fuck's sake, don't stand over me like that. It's bad enough, isn't it?"

"Alright, Haymitch. We're sitting down, okay?" Peeta takes a seat on the edge of the bed. Irritated at Peeta's obtuseness, Katniss drops to the floor and crosses her legs.

"Hey," she says, to get Haymitch's attention on her and off of the power-play Peeta is so oblivious to. "Tell me. How'd you get them to let us go back to 12?"

Haymitch meets her eyes. This is going to be hellish. "I didn't save you from _anything_. I told you a long time ago there was nothing I could do to save you," he reminds her. As defenses go, it's not much. She's going to hate him. They both are.

Katniss waits, impassive.

"You have to get pregnant."

She gets up and takes a couple of steps towards the door, backing away from him. She's shaking her head. "No. No."

"What do you mean?" Peeta asks from above him, where he can't see. He's lost the ability to gauge intentions from voice alone.

"I mean- you have to impregnate Katniss as soon as possible. Within the next week." He feels dirty just saying the words. They were his idea, and now the kids will always hear those demands in his voice.

"No!" Katniss yells. She flies at him, scratching the side of his face, crying wild curses.

"Stop it!" Peeta cries in a startled voice. He grabs Katniss around the waist and hauls her away, lifting her off her feet as she continues to struggle.

"Let me go, Peeta!" she yells at him, staring daggers at Haymitch.

Haymitch stares back, wary but also darkly amused. So that's what they mean by 'catfight'. Not that he put up much of a fight. But still, _scratching_? She's such a _girl_.

He's back up on his elbows, and that's a little better. The side of his face stings where she got him, but he resists the impulse to touch it. He doesn't want to see blood on his fingers. If he does, he might forget where he is.

"Calm down! Katniss, just stop and let him explain. Please?" Peeta is still holding her back. She stamps down on one of his feet, and he drops his arms with a muffled '_argh_'.

"Fine. Explain," Katniss fumes at Haymitch. "Peeta, touch me again and I'll kick you right in the balls."

"Alright, everybody, can we please just institute a no-touching rule? No hitting, kicking, scratching, or anything else. Let's try it for ten minutes, how about that?" Peeta sounds pissed.

"I don't think a no-touching rule is going to help your situation," Haymitch drawls.

"Shut up," hisses Katniss.

"Explain," demands Peeta at the same time.

Haymitch looks down at his hands and lets them clench in the sheets a few times. "Okay. Let me make this very easy for you. You have two options: You can marry each other and have a kid together, or you can spend the next few decades getting assaulted by rich Capitolites." He looks up to see if this is sinking in. And of course it isn't. Nothing will ever be that simple with Katniss.

"Why? That wasn't the deal before. Why did it change? What was the deal before, and how can you threaten to let them _rape_ me if I don't agree to be bred like a _goat_?"

"You stupid, sorry little kid," Haymitch says. He begins trying to push himself up again, but stops after a couple of seconds. It's hopeless; this whole fucked up situation is just hopeless. "Fine! If you'd rather be raped and tortured by every perverted freak in the Capitol than marry Peeta and have a kid, well, you have fun with that, _honey_. Too bad about dragging Peeta along with you, yeah?" He turns his furious gaze on Peeta. "Don't take it too hard, boy. She doesn't have any more sense than a damn chicken."

Katniss looks at Peeta almost pleadingly. "Don't you get it? We _can't_. Any child we had, they'd turn into a weapon. They'd own us."

"They already own you," Haymitch scoffs. "They own you and Peeta and certainly me. Or are you on this train just for a thrill?"

"Katniss, we need to try it, okay?" Peeta speaks up. "We're going to think of a way out of this. All of it. I promise we will." His eyes briefly meet Haymitch's. "But in the meantime we all have to survive as best we can."

"Being pregnant and having a baby will only increase your influence, you know," Haymitch says thoughtfully. "It would keep you in the spotlight, give you a platform. Maybe you could do something with that."

"A baby is not a path to power and influence! It's just a helpless creature I'll have to protect. And if it lives to be a teenager they'll take it away and kill it in the Games. And I'll have a front row seat," she says, glaring at Haymitch.

"You won't be alone," Peeta tells her. He's groping for a reassuring, confident tone. He feels like he's been punched in the gut, but someone has to convince Katniss to accept the less horrible alternative here. And she seems to be in a 'shoot-the-messenger' mood, so that leaves him. "I'll help you protect the child. So will Haymitch. And we'll find a way out of Snow's power long before our son or daughter is old enough for the Reaping."

Katniss's eyes move slowly between Peeta's earnest, determined face and Haymitch, barely managing to even hold himself up on his elbows but too stubborn to lie down. She doesn't look particularly reassured.

"I think the girl's too smart for your pep talk," Haymitch remarks.

"That's not helpful," Peeta says shortly.

"Do you really think we should let Snow order us to get married and have a kid?" Katniss asks.

"I think it's the only sensible course open to us. Could you really let Snow turn you into a prostitute?"

"No," Katniss says, her eyes sparking.

"I could never live with them doing that to you," Peeta says sincerely. "I'd die first."

"Goddamn teenagers," Haymitch mutters, uncomfortable and angry. Peeta will convince her; he's good at this sort of thing. Haymitch wants them to go away so he can lie back down. He feels miserable and tired and just much too sober for this.

"It's so messed up that I'm even considering this," Katniss says, ignoring Haymitch's surly grunt. How can she have a baby with Peeta? She doesn't even know how she feels about him. But Snow has trapped her with brutal efficiency. The doors have slammed shut faster than she could hope to keep track of, ever faster, and now…

"Okay," she says, and she's remembering all the way back to the very beginning, onstage and determined not to cry (I won't give them the satisfaction. I can't look weak. I _won't._) "I'll do it."

"Okay. Okay, good," Haymitch says, even as part of his mind turns away from all of this and begins trying to shut down. It isn't until then, with her words and his hanging between them like a condemnation, that he knows he'd hoped she'd refuse. He'd hoped there would be nothing more he could do. He curls his fingers into the sheets and forces a more realistic hope to coalesce: just that he can keep his head off the pillow until the kids leave.

"There are pills you have to take," he says. "They're in the box on the nightstand."

"Which of us?" Peeta asks.

"Her. Three of them. One each day for three days before you do anything."

"Fine," Katniss says, snatching the small black case. She shoves the offending item into her pocket without as much as a glance at it. "Anything else?"

"Katniss-" Peeta starts, but she talks over him.

"I'd like to be left alone now. So- is there _anything else_ I need to know?" The words come out a little rushed, and she wants to leave as much as Haymitch wants her gone.

"No, that's all. For now." Absurdly, he finds himself laughing at those words. Have more meaningless words ever been spoken? Maybe the alcohol is finally kicking in.

She escapes without a backward glance at either of them, shutting the door behind herself with a definitive click.


	12. Refuge

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: This is another M-rated chapter. Nothing 'on-screen', but very disturbing stuff alluded to. References to non-con and torture. If you're too young for such material, please do not read this one. This is based on a nightmare that freaked me out too much to go back to sleep.

Note 2: Thanks Jodinia and Mydarlingferocious105 for the follows!

**Capitol Nights**

The door flies open and Peeta jumps to his feet as Haymitch darts into his house and shuts the door behind himself. He fumbles with the lock, clumsy in his haste. His gray eyes are wide with terror, and he's twitching like a horse left out in a thunderstorm. Peering at him from across the room, Peeta sees that he's frantic, almost out of his head.

"Peeta, please, can I stay here? Just for a little while?" He's looking back and forth between the door and Peeta, and nothing about his behavior is remotely like him.

"Of course you can. Haymitch, what's wrong?" Peeta approaches with slow steps, until he's close enough to lay a hand on the other man's arm. Haymitch jerks away as though the touch burns him. To Peeta's dismay, he begins to sob. He raises his hands to hide his face, like the final touch of madness. But the picture gets even worse: he's clearly afraid to take his eyes off either the door or Peeta, and the result is that his hands jerk up and down like some horrible clockwork toy.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please let me stay! I can stop!" he begs, batshit crazy with fear.

"It's okay. Everything's okay," Peeta tries to soothe him. "Hush, now. It's alright. I'm here." He's aware they're the meaningless nothings one uses to calm a young kid after some silly nightmare, and blatantly the wrong words for this situation. But he's at a loss and beginning to be frightened, himself. What could make Haymitch, of all people, behave like this? The most important thing in the world right now is to get him to stop crying and looking around in such helpless terror.

Haymitch is taking deep, loud breaths, trying to regain control. His voice is still tremulous when he says, "Sorry. Please, let me stay here for a little while. Just ten or fifteen minutes, okay? If I can just get that much of a break, I guess I can-" He looks back toward the door, eyes getting wide and starey. Peeta quickly moves to distract him.

"Come sit down." He guides Haymitch to the dining room table, both relieved that his touch is accepted this time and worried by the way he can feel the muscles of Haymitch's forearm jumping even through the fabric of his long sleeved shirt. The clumsiness is still there. If anything it seems to have gotten worse. He keeps tripping over his own feet. He no sooner drops into the chair than he grips the edge of the darkly shining table and hunches over, beginning to retch.

A reflexive thought passes through Peeta's mind, long ingrained and unconnected to any specific situation: _Get a bowl before he throws up on the floor._ But he doesn't want to leave Haymitch unattended for even that long. _Then at least pull his hair back._ If he tries to do that Haymitch will probably bite him. All of his mother's rules are useless in this situation. He suspects he is, too.

After a long moment the retching sounds taper off into a few weak coughs and gulping swallows. Haymitch sits up enough to put his elbows on the table, shoulders still raised. There he huddles, looking down.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

Haymitch directs his words at the table, his tone bleak and miserable. "There's this thing called a shock wand." He flinches a little at the words, and then continues. "It hurts like hell. Balthamos was- he was trying to teach me something. I kept doing something wrong. I don't know what. He didn't tell me what. Maybe he just likes using it. He puts it inside me, and it hurts like hell. I shouldn't have run. That was stupid. But he kept doing it over and over, and I thought he'd just go on until I died of it. Stupid, stupid." He slams a hand down on the table. "_Fuck_! Well, he'll definitely do it again _now_."

Peeta knows he needs to stop staring, knows that's exactly the wrong response right now. Being sick probably wouldn't be helpful either. He also knows Haymitch would never have told him this if he wasn't in such a state. There'll be no protecting him from Balthamos, but he has to do something other than stare.

"A shock wand? When you said he puts it inside you, did you mean…"

Haymitch won't look at him now. He's starting to come back to himself, and shame is overcoming the fear and desperation.

"Of course that's what you meant," Peeta says softly. He comes around the table, noting the way Haymitch follows his movements and leans tensely away from him. Such mannerisms have become a part of him now, impossible to hide even from Katniss. It's as though some sick, blackened part of his mind is rising to the surface, gaining more of a hold every day this goes on. In that rapidly growing region of his psyche, even Peeta might become one of his tormentors. Even Katniss.

He takes the man's wrists and draws him out of the chair, sits them both down on the floor. Then he pulls Haymitch into his arms and just holds him. Haymitch lies against his chest, head tucked down so that his hair hides his face. There's something in his hair, pale and shiny and wet-looking, and Peeta thinks he knows what that fucking sick bastard was 'teaching' Haymitch. He hugs the man closer.

This episode, so thoroughly unlike anything that came before, is a turning point. Haymitch is no longer just disturbed, or traumatized. In a single month, he's become neurotic. How much longer before it's a full-blown psychosis? How much more torture and sexual abuse can his mind take?

But there's no way to stop it. Part of this is surely aimed at scaring him and Katniss, making sure they continue to behave. Is Snow deliberately driving Haymitch out of his mind as a warning to the two younger and potentially more dangerous Victors of Twelve? Or is Haymitch being punished for something he or Katniss have already done, similar to how he was whipped because Thread couldn't whip Katniss? How much of the blame does he own for this wraith of lambent eyes and befouled hair and the incongruous gleam of diamonds?

"We can't let him do that to you," Peeta says uselessly.

Haymitch pushes away from him. "You can't do shit about it. And you should never have known about it. What the fuck is wrong with me?" Then he mutters, "Stupid whore."

"Nothing's wrong with you. You were scared. You don't deserve any of this. You know that, right?"

"He can't teach me what I'm not willing to learn."

Peeta snorts. "Hence the torture."

Haymitch glances at him, anger barely masking his humiliation. "I've been trying like hell all morning to avoid the torture. Don't you get it, kid? They've won. I'm nothing but a trained Capitol pet, now."

Peeta comes to a sudden decision. Come what may, this has gone far enough. If he lets Haymitch go back to that, or lets Balthamos take him back, it will be the end of any will to fight Haymitch can still muster up.

"You're staying here until they take you back to the Capitol. I'll call Effie if I have to, or Cinna."

"No. Balthamos will just send Peacekeepers to get me."

"Let him. I'm the 'proud father-to-be', Katniss is pregnant, and we're constantly in the limelight. Thread wouldn't dare hurt us or our families now."

"Peeta, no. It isn't Thread you have to worry about. If you defy Snow there will be repercussions. There always are."

"We'll deal with it. I'm not talking about some big, public gesture. No one in the district will be any the wiser. Katniss and I are still having a baby and getting married, as ordered, and they'll still take you back to the Capitol when they're ready to. You staying here for a week or two might not matter to Snow at all."

"It's a hell of a risk, and in a week or two it won't matter anyway."

"Haymitch, please just stay. I need to at least try."

For a long moment Haymitch is silent. Then he nods and mutters, "Okay."

"Good. Wait a minute." Peeta gets up and retrieves a damp towel from the sink. Dropping down beside Haymitch again, he says, "Hold still."

"What is it?" Haymitch leans away from the cloth, and then steadies himself. Peeta dabs at his hair without answering. He huffs slightly and takes hold of the locks so he can clean them more thoroughly.

"Oh. Shit," Haymitch mutters as he realizes what Peeta is cleaning out of his hair. He pulls away again, feeling hot and humiliated. He should just go kill himself. He can't protect anyone.

"Hold still, it's almost out," Peeta says in his familiar firm, reassuring voice.

'It's almost out'? What? The wand, a john's cock, that _thing_ the petite woman with the strawberry blond hair had been wearing?

He laughs jaggedly. "You sound like a guy in a bad porn vid."

Peeta replays his words, shrugs. "I wouldn't know about that," he says, working to keep the anger out of his voice. It's misdirected, and it's a relic of how uncomfortable he is with this new bit of knowledge about Haymitch's situation. And as if things weren't bad enough, Haymitch is getting into one of his ugly moods.

So he continues: "I'm going to keep you safe from Balthamos for the rest of the time that you're here. Now hold still and let me clean his mess out of your hair."

Haymitch knocks his hand away violently. "Screw you, Peeta. You would have fit right in, you know. They would have just _loved_ you. But- for now at least- they have me instead. So you can just go take a flying leap off the nearest cliff. Really, screw you." He stands up and stalks over to the kitchen counter, where he begins to yank drawers out and rifle their contents.

"What are you looking for?" Peeta asks. He stands up, too, but stays where he is.

"Knife. I'm going to cut it off. Maybe all of it."

"Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. You can go upstairs and take a shower."

"Where the hell do you keep the knives? Shouldn't you have a different damn set for every day of the week, bread boy?"

"Haymitch, you can't cut your hair. You know you can't. Your stylists would be angry. Balthamos would be angry. Remember all those repercussions you were talking about earlier. I know it stings, but you can't mess up your look. It's not worth whatever they'd do to you."

Haymitch has gone still, letting the truth of it sink in. He does know. He's had this same hairstyle and same golden stubble since he was twenty-six. It had been his only modification. Now there's his mutilated ear, too. But still, things could be a whole hell of a lot worse than that. He can't cut his hair, and if he's going to be in front of a camera within the next three days or so he can't shave off the stubble. It's not worth the risk.

Snarling in rage, he grabs a heavy ceramic mixing bowl and throws it across the room as hard as he can. It smashes against the opposite wall, but already his rage is bleeding out of him. It's a relief to just feel tired and resigned again for a while.

Peeta flinches as the bowl hits the wall, leaving a sizeable dent. "Haymitch?" he inquires cautiously. "Calm down. Do you need me to leave for a few minutes?" He hopes not. Haymitch looks like he just might wreck the whole kitchen if he's left unsupervised. Even worse, he might give up on any tenuous idea of respite and go back to his own house.

"I hate being blond," Haymitch says to himself in a quiet, almost reflective tone. "I'm going to take a shower now. Sorry about your bowl."

"That's alright. I can make do with the other six," Peeta says sarcastically, watching Haymitch retreat up the stairs.


	13. Dark Parallels

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 13**

"Haymitch?" Peeta calls from the top of the stairs. He looks down the empty hallway. The sound of the shower running had cut off some time ago, but Haymitch hadn't come back downstairs. Peeta hadn't really expected him to. But it had given Peeta far more time than he'd wanted to think about what the man had revealed to him while half out of his mind with pain and fear and shame.

The bathroom door is ajar, and he can see that the light is turned off. Not in there, then. Peeta raps lightly on the door of the guest bedroom. There's a beat of silence before Haymitch replies from within.

"Yeah?"

"It's Peeta. Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

The monosyllabic responses aren't as reassuring as he could have hoped, but at least he's not throwing things at the wall anymore. "I'm going to visit Katniss. Do you want to come with?"

"No."

"Haymitch… Can I come in?"

"Your house."

Peeta opens the door. Haymitch is sitting on the bed, leaning forward a little. He is wearing the same clothes he had on earlier, but his hair is wet and brushed back. He huffs and shakes his head before he speaks.

"This is the part where we talk about it, right?" Bitter sarcasm drips from every word. "What's there to talk about? He's assaulted me more than a dozen times and he's used the wand on me even more than that. He's done it before, he'll do it again, and there's nothing you can do to help. That all the talking I want to do about this, ever. Okay?"

"Okay." Peeta nods. He's embarrassed, and he has to work to look up and meet Haymitch's eyes. When he does look up, Haymitch isn't looking at him anyway. Somehow this makes Peeta feel even worse. His eyes suddenly feel hot, and a lump has risen in his throat.

"I think things have gone beyond the point where a chaperone would do any good."

"A chaperone?" Peeta asks, swallowing thickly.

"You and Katniss. Me going with you to visit her."

"Oh. Right. Look, don't talk like that in front of her, okay? She's still a little freaked out by all of this."

They're falling back into their normal rhythm now. It's a status quo shot through with pitch and scarlet streaks of embarrassment and rage and helpless despair and choking shame, and it's a miserable struggle to maintain it. Of course Haymitch didn't come back downstairs, and he should have left him alone. But leaving Haymitch alone up here as though he doesn't give a damn (or as though being around him is embarrassing now) would have been despicable. The only thing Peeta's sure of anymore is that he is useless.

And so they struggle on, and it gets a little easier. It helps that both of them genuinely care more about Katniss than they do about anything else at this point.

"Imagine how well she'll take it when her belly starts growing."

"I have imagined it," Peeta says quietly.

Haymitch offers him a smile, nods in acquiescence to the request Peeta didn't even know he was making. Peeta moves forward into the room and sits beside Haymitch on the bed.

"She'll come around. She's stubborn, is all. She'll see that having a kid isn't the end of the world, even here and even now."

"Thanks. It's just that-" Peeta sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Sometimes I think she's more upset about me than she is about the baby. Marrying me, and what we did."

"Everything is about sex, isn't it? I suspected."

"I'm sorry. We don't have to talk about this." Peeta sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I could just really use some advice."

"Don't you have a father you can talk about this with? Come to that, where _are_ your parents?"

"They're back at our old house in Town. After the wedding, Katniss is supposed to move in here with me." He suddenly adopts a TV announcer voice, broad-worded and jocular. "You're looking at the future home of Panem's most famous couple, the Star-Crossed Lovers themselves!" The words seem to hang in the air of the tidy little bedroom, and he wishes he could call them back.

Haymitch banishes them with a laconic, "Cozy." Then: "Let her alone."

"What?"

"The girl did what she had to do. Give her some time to-" what, forget? Cope? "To deal with it before she has to move in here and see you every day."

"It's not like I wanted to do that either, you know," Peeta says heatedly. "Not that I didn't like it!" He blushes, floundering for words. "I mean- you know what I mean!"

Haymitch actively resists the impulse to groan and put his face in his hands. He really, really does not want to be part of this conversation.

"It was good, okay?" Peeta continues. "But our first time shouldn't have been like that. She was a virgin."

"Yeah, I figured."

"I would have waited as long as it took for her to be ready. Even if it wasn't until we were thirty."

"Such a great and storied age," Haymitch muses sarcastically.

Peeta looks over at him, exasperated. "You're deliberately misunderstanding me."

"Of course you would have waited. Not your choice. Not your _fault_. She could do a lot worse than marrying you."

Peeta nods, acknowledging the compliment as much as their status quo will allow. "I'm still going over there. She needs to know she's not alone in all this. You should come along. She'd like seeing you."

"I'm going to the Hob. Grocery run."

"There's liquor in the cabinet over the fridge."

"Well you just think of everything, don't you?"

Ignoring his tone, Peeta says, "Why don't you get a bottle and come along? It really only amounts to making sure she hasn't run off into the woods or gone on a killing spree, and being there if she's crying."

"Oh gods, really?"

"She hasn't yet, but my mom says pregnant women do that a lot," Peeta says stolidly.

"It's probably best that I stay here, considering how our last conversation went."

Predictably, Haymitch is going to make him come right out and ask. "You will stay here, won't you?"

Haymitch spreads his hands, smiling sardonically. "Where would I go?" Dropping the pretence, he gives Peeta a sudden and unsettling grimace. Something like hate flashes in his gray eyes, and Peeta is startled enough to draw back from him. For just a second, Haymitch's lip curls away from his teeth like a dog guarding a farmyard.

"Go on, kid. Go pester Katniss for a while. I guess she'd better get used to it." The hate is gone, if it was ever there, but his voice is a rough and slightly garbled half-growl.

"Haymitch?" Peeta says uncertainly.

"Get out of here." Haymitch clenches his fists and stares down at them.

"Okay," Peeta says, standing up. "I'll be back soon." He heads for the door, walking slowly. At the door, he looks back at the hunched figure on the bed. "Please, stay here, okay?"

"_Goddamn it, Peeta_!" Haymitch roars at him, springing to his feet. He shoves the nightstand over with a hard jolt of his open hands, and the lamp that had been on it clashes to the floor and breaks. Peeta steps back away from him, shutting the door quickly. He leans against it, heart hammering. There's another loud crash from inside the room, and Peeta tries to think what it could have been. Maybe Haymitch has upended the bed.

Shaking his head, Peeta retreats towards the stairs. He's really horrible at this, worse than useless. Haymitch had tried to tell him that he needed to be alone, and he hadn't even been able to handle _that_.

1234567890

Prim opens the door and smiles at seeing who it is. Katniss always perks up a little when Peeta visits and she'd been particularly moody and withdrawn today. "Come on in. I'll get Katniss."

"I'm here," Katniss says, coming into the hall. "No bread this time?"

Peeta looks down at his empty hands, as though noticing for the first time that he lacks the usual offering. With everything that had happened today, he had forgotten all about the pumpkin bread he had planned to bake her. "Sorry." He tries for a joking smile. "I'll bring you twice as much tomorrow."

She smiles back at him, and her smile is no more genuine than his. At least she's making an effort, which reassures him that she doesn't blame him for this. Peeta hates this, longs for the closeness they had just begun to achieve together before Snow's latest attack. He smiles stiltedly at her from a few feet away and thinks: _I could have made you love me_.

"So- how are you?" he asks.

"Good, all things considered," she replies with a heartbreaking amount of carefulness just beneath the icing of casual conversation. "And you?"

"Good. I'm good, too."

"Let's go in the kitchen," Prim says brightly, letting her encouraging smile fall on each of them in turn. "Mom made deviled eggs. We'll feed you for a change, Peeta."

"That sounds great," Peeta says, relieved. He had actually started to wish Haymitch had come, just to break up the silences.

The three of them troop into the kitchen and Prim insists they sit down while she gets the platter of eggs and glasses of milk.

"Milk, milk, milk. That's all I get to drink anymore," Katniss gripes, sounding almost good-humored.

"You like milk. Don't sulk." Prim grins as she sets the glass in front of her sister. Katniss grins back and sticks her tongue out. "Well, I suppose _someone_ must count the flowers on the upstairs wallpaper," Prim says in an exaggerated put-upon tone. "You two will have to make do without me." She leaves, skipping a little because laughter is contagious and if you can't laugh plain silliness will sometimes serve almost as well.

Katniss drains her glass of milk and sets the empty vessel back on the table. She looks at it in a dispirited way that Peeta finds deeply disturbing for a second, without knowing why. Then the feeling of unease is gone and Katniss's direct gray eyes are fixed on him.

"If it's a girl, I want to name her Rue."

"Do you really think that's, well, prudent?" Peeta asks, watching her.

Katniss frowns and her eyes throw out sparks. "I don't care. They shouldn't be able to just forget her. We're throwaways to them, all of us from the districts. They kill us, and the next day they don't even remember our names. Well, they're going to remember Rue. She was twelve, and they killed her, and I'll never let them forget. And if it's a boy, we're going to name him Thresh."

Peeta regards her, feeling harried and overwhelmed. He's emotionally exhausted from the hellish evening he just spent with Haymitch, and sometimes it seems to him that the other two Victors of 12 _must_ have secret strategy sessions to coordinate these things. It's the only explanation.

Pushing that singularly unhelpful idea aside, he tries, "We don't have to decide this right now, do we? We have nine months. Let's just think it over."

"What do you want to call it?" Katniss asks truculently. "Coriolanus?"

"That's not fair. I just don't think it's smart to paint a target on our child's back." It's important to sound calm and reasonable, he reminds himself.

"Your definition of 'smart' keeps Snow and all his cronies in power." She glares at him as though he's the most cowardly fool she's ever had the misfortune to meet.

"Right, it's entirely my fault!" Atta boy, he tells himself. Good job on the calm and reasonable. He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. His head is starting to hurt. "Look, let's not fight. I'm not saying we can't name her Rue, or name him Thresh." He avoids saying 'it', as he has from the start. "I'm just saying we should be careful and do what we need to do to keep our child safe."

"Wake up, Peeta! None of us are safe! None of us will ever be _safe_!" There's an edge of hysteria to her voice, and he comes around the table to sit beside her and refuses to draw any parallels. There _are_ no similarities in the tone of her voice, or in his actions. None _at all_.

"Hey, it's alright. We'll think of something. I promise you our child will never have their name in the Reaping bowl." He lays a hand on her arm. "You know I'd do anything for you, right?"

She studies him. "I believe you'd try."

"And if someday 'anything' means killing Snow myself, so be it."

"Peeta!" She's startled into a laugh. "You ridiculous, naïve, pandering _jerk_!" She tries to stop smiling, then gives up and laughs again.

Peeta nods seriously. "I'm probably a little of all those things. But I'd still do anything for you."

"Fine!" She waves a hand imperiously. "Go forth and kill Snow and save us all. I command it!"

He smiles to show her that he doesn't mind her teasing, but his voice doesn't change. "Listen to me, Katniss. I'll only say this one more time, but someday I'll prove it. He'll die before he ever sells you in the Capitol and before his sick Games ever touch our son or daughter." There's no talking to her tonight, and he probably should check on Haymitch soon anyway. He gets up to leave.

"Goodnight. I'll be back tomorrow. I love you." Peeta heads for the door.

"Peeta, wait," she calls from the table. He turns back, and after a few seconds of silence she gets up and comes to him. She hugs him, and he hugs her back at once. That's one of the nice things about Peeta, and she feels a rush of something that might, in a better world, have been love. She inhales his scent and lets herself relax a little as his strong arms encircle her.

"I'm still naming it Rue or Thresh," she says against his chest.

"Fine names," Peeta says stolidly, giving her a gentle squeeze.

Katniss smiles and pulls away from him. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

"I don't think that's a great idea," Peeta says with some reluctance.

"Oh, okay." Katniss steps back, surprised and a little hurt. Is he angry about the names? Well, tough, she tells herself. But she doesn't want him to be angry with her. His visits are the only things that seem to work for her over the last week or so.

He reads her thought in her eyes and says, "No, it's nothing like that. It's just- Haymitch is staying with me, and he's in a mood."

"Why is he staying with you?" That's not like him at all, especially during his more surly interludes.

Peeta shrugs, at a bit of a loss. "Who knows? He's not very talkative today. General contrariness?" Katniss is clearly not buying this, and he really should have anticipated this question and come up with something.

"So he just showed up at your house and announced he was sleeping over?" Katniss scoffs.

Peeta realizes he is shuffling his feet and stops too quickly, and then looks up at Katniss to see if she caught the movement. Great, now he's giving her the startled-deer look. She narrows her eyes at him in return.

After a few seconds Peeta says, with an air of reluctance, "I think his back still hurts a lot more than he wants to admit, and he probably didn't feel up to walking to the Hob when his liquor supply ran out."

"Oh." That explains everything. Katniss still wonders why Peeta feels any obligation to cover for Haymitch, to collude in his adolescent denial. If Haymitch is too proud to admit the obvious, Peeta will try to ignore it, too. She considers her options. "Is he alright?"

"It's all relative," Peeta says noncommittally.

"I guess I'll stay here, then," she decides. She doesn't really want to see Haymitch, not yet. It's wretched to feel that she can't speak to one of the only two others who share her cage in this hell, but she just can't.

Looking past Peeta into the warm glow of the hall, it strikes her that the light in this house is piss-yellow. It makes Peeta's skin look sallow and mutes the bright blue of his eyes into something dull and murky. The carpet under his feet is the color white carpet becomes after years of careless, thoughtless people have tracked mud and grime and filth all over it, grinding it in deep. This place is so ugly. It's a joke, a taunt, something for the Capitolites to laugh up their sleeves at. How could she have not noticed that before?

Peeta smiles at her, not at all liking the cold, distant look on her face. "Well… goodnight, then. I'll see you tomorrow. I love you." By the time he says the final words of his refrain, she has turned back to the table with indifference written in every line of her slender silhouette.


	14. Temporary Measures

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 14**

There are three people huddled together on his front step, and even before he gets close enough to see them clearly Peeta knows they're Capitolites. It's in the way they turn toward his approach like a single being, staring at him through the frost-stricken night with bright, lively eyes. One of them- a man with a round face and short, curly brown hair- steps forward and waves at Peeta as though to flag him down. Peeta stops a few feet away from them and watches the other two, another man and a woman, swivel their gaze anxiously back and forth between him and their leader.

"I'm Peeta Mellark," he says before the curly-haired man can speak. "You're trespassing. Please leave."

The trio draws closer together until they're actually brushing against one another. The woman smiles a sunny, meaningless smile at Peeta and clutches the leader's shoulder.

"Hi, Peeta. We know who you are, of course," Curly-Hair says pleasantly.

"Of course," the woman interrupts, her smile widening.

"I'm Thaddeus, and these are my associates: Shilana and Herodotus."

"Big fan," Shilana interrupts again, and she puts her chin down on top of the hand already wrapped around Thaddeus's shoulder. Next she'll climb up his back and perch on his shoulder like a deranged monkey, Peeta thinks bemusedly.

"We're medics from Victor's Hospital, in the _Capitol_," Thaddeus emphasizes. He raises his eyebrows, trying to convey to Peeta that he should be feeling very impressed by this information. Awed, even.

"We really must see to our charge," Herodotus speaks up for the first time, his voice petulant and over-loud in the still winter night. "We've been knocking on this door for more than ten minutes!"

"How very inconvenient for you," Peeta replies with counterfeit sympathy.

"Oh, that's quite alright! All part of the job!" Thaddeus declares heartily, winking at Peeta. Herodotus voices a loud cry of disgust and throws up his hands. Shilana wraps her free arm around Thaddeus's neck and stares hungrily at Peeta.

"Haymitch is staying here. Get out of my way, please." Peeta moves past them to get to the door. As he passes Shilana, she reaches out and pats his face lightly and quickly. Peeta jerks away, startled and affronted. He gives her a hard stare. Her thousand-watt smile doesn't even falter.

"That's fine with us," Herodotus says. "Makes our job easier. We told Balthamos that Haymitch wasn't recovered enough for T and C, but would he listen to us?"

"Heavens, no!" Shilana laughs. "We're only his assigned caretakers, after all!"

"T and C?" Peeta asks.

"Training and Conditioning," Thaddeus supplies. "It gives him muscle tremors, and you would think it would be obvious why that was a bad idea for someone in his condition."

"Some medics you are," Peeta says without thinking.

"Balthamos outranks us," Thaddeus replies a bit stiffly. "Perhaps we could go inside now? It really is horridly cold out here."

"Where's Balthamos?" Peeta asks them, looking around with sudden unease.

"Not with us, certainly. I doubt you have any concept of how far from recovered he is from his little misadventure with your Peacekeepers. If he doesn't get his regular treatments, the exposed tissue on his back will dry out and die."

"Fine, come in." Peeta unlocks the door as he speaks, letting himself into the heat of the house and leaving them to scramble in his wake. "I'll ask him if he'll let you treat him."

"Ask him if he'd rather end up getting the dead tissue cut away and be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

The three of them resume their huddle in the entryway of Peeta's house, whispering amongst themselves and shivering in their theatrical, overdone way. Their presence here is repugnant, but at least they don't seem inclined to drift throughout the house. It would be gratifying to shove them back out the door as soon as possible. He shakes his head and goes upstairs.

Peeta knocks on the door to the guestroom and calls, "Haymitch?" There's no sound from within. He knocks louder. "Haymitch, can I come in?" Still nothing. Bracing himself against the possibility of thrown furniture, he opens the door.

Haymitch is sprawled out on the bed, still fully dressed and also tangled in the sheets, passed out drunk. He's lying prone, golden hair fanned over the side of his face, one arm hanging off the edge of the bed. The dresser and the nightstand are both laying on their sides, and the mosaic of the shattered lamp flashes up shafts of light from the floor.

Peeta crouches by the bed and collects the pieces of broken glass, finishing by running his hand lightly over the carpet to make sure he got them all. He deposits them in a corner for now, where at least no one will step on them. Then he returns to the bed and takes up Haymitch's trailing hand to wake him by digging the knuckle of his thumb into the palm.

"Gerrof," Haymitch mutters, his voice heavily slurred.

"Haymitch, are you awake?"

"_Gerrof._"

"I'm not _on_ you. Come on, wake up." But it's clear that he's much too drunk. Sludgy semi-coherence is going to be the best he can do tonight. Still, Peeta tries to make him understand. "The medics from the Capitol are downstairs."

"Huh." Haymitch doesn't open his eyes.

"Do you understand me? Is there anybody in there?" Why would anyone want to render themselves mindless like this on a regular basis? How bad does it have to be to make destroying your ability to think seem like the desirable option?

"'E henschmen. 'Ell 'em ta leave."

"You need treatment. They said you'll end up in a wheelchair if your back isn't seen to."

"Huh."

"Open your eyes, now," Peeta coaxes.

"Drunk, can ya see 'at? Lemme sleep."

"Alright," Peeta surrenders. "Go back to sleep. I'm just going to have them come up here and take care of your back, okay?"

He doesn't even get a grunt in reply this time. Haymitch has slipped back into the embrace of his drug, and it would do about as much good to address his question to the broken lamp and the cracked furniture. Peeta lifts his arm up onto the bed and then goes back downstairs.

"He's dead drunk," he informs Thaddeus. "Is what you're going to do going to hurt?"

Thaddeus shakes his head. "He won't even wake up. And we're prepared if he does, of course."

Shilana adds, "We know everything there is to know about treating him by now."

"Come on, then," Peeta says, doing nothing to hide his dislike as he leads them up the stairs.

"Are you and he-" Shilana starts, then breaks off with a titter.

Peeta looks back at the odd sound. Was that a laugh? "Are we what?"

"Having each other!" she declares. "You're so _protective_! It's adorable! Oh, are you?"

Peeta fixes his gaze straight ahead and clenches his fists. Keep walking, keep walking. "No. No, we're not." No wonder Haymitch thinks everything is about sex. He's trapped around these kinds of people so much of the time, and they've seen to it that he's in an agitated, suggestible state.

"This isn't very pretty," Thaddeus says as they enter the guestroom, with an air of bringing the conversation back to the matter at hand. "You'll want to leave this to us and go work on your paintings or something."

Peeta gives him an incredulous look. "I was there when he was whipped. I can handle it."

"Oh, he's so brave!" Shilana proclaims rapturously. If she was anyone else, Peeta would be sure she was making fun of him. He contemplates her wide smile and dewy eyes and a sudden shudder comes over him. This, then, is one of his fans from the Capitol. And just how well are medics paid?

Herodotus minces past him and begins tugging at Haymitch's shirt, and Peeta redirects his attention to the bed. The Capitolite isn't making any effort to be gentle about it, but Haymitch doesn't stir at all. In this state, it would require actual pain to wake him.

"Look at this! We specifically told him not to get the dressing wet!"

"And did you really expect compliance from him, my dear Hero?" Thaddeus asks in a calming manner. "You know how closely he needs to be watched. It's really Balthamos's fault for letting him go haring off like that."

Herodotus sniffs. "Well, let's get it off him and see how much more work he's managed to make for us."

The blue dressing covers Haymitch's entire back, shading into a darker blue-green in the places where the water has soaked all the way through. The border, wrapped around his sides and over his shoulders, is coated with a shiny amber substance, some sort of adhesive. Thaddeus removes what looks like a makeup brush from his case and begins to work his way around the edges. Peeta watches Thaddeus closely, and Shilana watches Peeta closely.

The dressing lifts off in one stiff piece, making a faint, reluctant cracking sound. If anything, Haymitch's back looks worse than the last time Peeta saw it, when he lay dying on Katniss's kitchen floor. It's an angry-looking purplish black, and the skin is thin, fragile, and completely translucent now. It spiders into a mass of fine wrinkles between his scapulae and in the depression of his lower back while looking painfully taut over his ribs.

"Get out," Peeta mutters very low. The words escape without conscious thought. It's impossible to feel anything but pity for the horribly maimed figure, and Haymitch would hate this, must hate this, being seen this way. It's wrong. It's sick. The only humane thing to do is to cover him up and let him die. Something like that must be agony.

It _is_ agony, but that's just the first and least of what it is. His leg is literally rotting in front of him while the sadistic Gamemakers leave them perched here on the Cornucopia and the hours pass. The sun beats down relentlessly, the bloodthirsty Capitolites look on, and in the end he will die to entertain them, of course he will, just another game piece after all.

Peeta turns away, shaking his head, sick with despair. The leg he no longer has is throbbing, pain shooting from his missing foot all the way up to his knee. 'Phantom pain', they call this, and tell him it's something impressionable people imagine they feel from time to time. By 'impressionable' they mean backwards, or even a bit dull witted. But what would Capitolites know about pain?

"Is it always going to look like that?" he asks the room, not turning back around. He rubs at his thigh just above the knee, kneading the muscles there.

"He'll get a couple of coats of synthetic skin once we get him back to the Capitol. This is just a short-term plasti-net."

"Well, it's _meant_ to be short-term," Herodotus grumbles, prodding at the mutilation with some sort of round-edged instrument.

Shilana glides over, looking doubtful. "He's right, Thad. That won't hold together much longer."

"I'm sure we won't be here much longer," Thaddeus soothes.


	15. Modifications

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks to TheGyrhan and Sunshinebear711 for the follows, and a happy holiday to all of you who have read this far!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 15**

Balthamos is waiting for him on the train, waiting in ambush like a villain in one of those absurd Capitol flicks. He even has an appropriately ominous opening line ready: "What am I going to do with you, Haymitch?"

"Sure you'll think of something." Haymitch braces himself against the wall next to the door and scans the room, squinting. His eyes don't really want to focus, and the scenery keeps doubling. A chair, a chair, where is a chair? He won't be on his feet much longer. But there's only the bed in this room, and damned if he's going to run from this bush-league Marquis d'Sade again. Even if he could make it back down the hall.

"Indeed I will. There's no one for you to hide behind here, Haymitch. Get on your knees, why don't you, and we'll see if you remember any of what I taught you."

Haymitch chuckles drunkenly. "Sure, I'll do that, but you're going to end up covered in vomit. That's probably not a problem for you, is it? I bet you like vomit. Piss, too. Have you got a bit of a scatological fetish swirling around that tiny mind, Balthamos?"

Balthamos takes an unobtrusive step back, wrinkling his nose. "Okay, then. I'll let you sleep it off before we resume our lessons. We have plenty of time, after all. The rest of your life," he says with a vulpine smile.

"Yeah. The rest of my life," Haymitch says. The haze of the alcohol cushions the words, makes them seem small and unimportant. Pushing off from the wall, he makes his careful way towards the bed. It's almost possible to ignore Balthamos, when his mind is in this comfortably numb state, and when Balthamos obligingly stops quacking. He'll just sit down, or maybe lie down, and think about sailing wax, whatever that is.

Balthamos watches him stumble to the bed and collapse onto it. He knows exactly what his charge needs. He's had two weeks to think about it while he sat by himself in that trashy little house adjacent to the trashiest section of the trashiest district in all of Panem. He'd even ventured out into the so-called town once, in the name of getting a full understanding of what he was dealing with. Like pigs rooting in a sty, the 12ers seemed happy in their squalid surroundings. It had been quite a sociology lesson.

The particular boar he has the task of training is as filthy and stupid and cowardly as all his degenerate brethren. The trouble comes from his being more than two decades past the usual training age. They're much easier to tame when they're taken young. What this one needs is an ever-present reminder of who owns him, something that won't let him forget his place the next time he's away from his masters for a few weeks.

Balthamos had known Haymitch would show up drunk. He had counted on it. Now he goes and stands over the figure half-curled up on the bed. Haymitch slits his eyes open and looks up at him before letting them fall closed again. Balthamos smiles thinly.

"That's right. You go on and pass out. I'm here," he murmurs. He sits down near the foot of the bed and makes himself wait. At length he stands up, giving one of the man's legs an absent pat. His mind is already jumping ahead. Yes, this is art. This is why they give the hard cases to him.

He goes to the door and pushes it open. "Socrates? He's ready for you."

The man he summons into the chamber has a shoulder-length mane of snow-white hair, streaked with metallic silver. His eyes are yellow and slit-pupiled. His breeches are lemon-colored and puff out at the hips and thighs. His slinks more than he walks, his eyes wide and his mouth curled into an eager smile. He carries a black briefcase, which he sets on the floor.

"Table. I need a table for my gear," he says in a quick, pinched voice.

"Just a moment, please." Balthamos regards him, a little annoyed. "You're not high, are you?"

"No. Never. Never work high."

"This has to be a good job, you know."

"I _am_ good," Socrates hisses.

"Of course you are. That's why I called you," Balthamos says peaceably. "I'll get you a table."

He leaves briefly, returning with one of the chairs from the dining car which he drags over and sets by the bed. Socrates has already pulled Haymitch's arms out and rolled his sleeves up above his elbows.

"You might want to go ahead and sedate him. He can be an unpredictable brute when he first wakes up," Balthamos remarks.

"Yes, yes." Socrates begins removing items from his suitcase and spreading them out on the darkly shining wood of the chair. One of the items is a capped syringe full of clear liquid. He snags it with two fingers, uncaps it with his teeth and spits the cap onto the floor. He grabs the unconscious man's chin in a heavy hand and tilts his head back. Haymitch stirs a little at the rough movement, eyelids fluttering. Then Socrates sinks the needle into his jugular and slowly pushes the sedative. When he lets go of Haymitch's chin, the head falls to the side limply.

There are no further signs of waking, and certainly there is no resistance, as they position him flat on his back. Nor as they spread a white towel over him and lay his bare hands and forearms on top of it. Nor as the buzz of Socrates' instruments begins.

They finish their work a little bit more than two hours later. As Socrates lovingly repacks his gear, Balthamos smears antibiotic ointment on Haymitch's wrists and hands and bandages them. Then they leave him to his sleep.

The sedative begins to wear off, and Haymitch rolls onto his side and draws his arms up against his chest. He moans without waking up. Filigree swings her axe into his hands again. He'd brought them up to hold his intestines in, and now he can't move them. Miserable but unafraid, he wishes she'd hurry up and kill him. In the dream he knows he doesn't want to survive this.


	16. Labels and Expectations

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Siriuslybananas, thanks for the comment. I don't follow actors, at all. I'm more of an alternate universe fan. That said, I do like the look and the voice WH lends the role.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 16**

Tonight he doesn't even bother with going to a bar. It's his second night off- an entire night, this time, his reward for being such a good boy. He has to be back by 7am. His cuff will chime once at 6am and twice at 6:30am to tell him it's time to get his ass back to the Cell. Beautiful little set-up they have going here. The only way he could miss his summons would be if he were passed out drunk.

Haymitch shakes his head briskly, as though the notion were some tangible thing to be shaken off like cold water. "I've got to protect the kids," he reminds himself with a mad little smile. He hoists the newly purchased bottle of vodka in a toast to his invisible companion. "Be strong."

The impulsive gesture draws his eyes back to his hand, and he lowers the bottle quickly. The plan for tonight is to find somewhere to drink until he's nicely situated between woozy light-headedness and passing out. Ideally, it will be somewhere where no one else is likely to come within ten feet of him. After that, he'll go back to the Cell and pass out there like a good little pet. Hell, he might even pass out in bed. It's not like it makes any difference.

He'd been fucked on a bed for the first time the previous night, fucked on his back like a damn _woman_. So it doesn't _fucking_ matter anymore, does it?

His hands are wrecked. And he really can't avoid looking at them. His eyes are drawn to them a hundred or so times an hour. He finds himself staring at them, drumming his fingers to make sure that they're still connected. Funny, he would have thought they'd hurt more. Something like that should hurt.

The backs of both wrists and hands are tattooed with cascades of roses. They're outlined in black and the few leaves are tattooed a deep forest green. The roses themselves are painted in with a semi-permanent skin dye, white and infused with glitter.

He'd buy gloves to hide them, but the streets seem to be lined only with boutiques competing for the tackiest dresses. He has no idea where he would find men's gloves, or if such tame accessories even exist in the Capitol. There is a park, though, and that's as good a place as any.

A woman in strips of neon silk catches his eye and waves, casting him a wide smile that glitters with diamonds. Resisting the initial impulse to stare at this odd vision, he casts about for an isolated place to sit. Twenty-five years of training himself not to react to their ludicrous costumes and absurd mannerisms and unctuous accents, helped along by countless sharp nudges from escorts and stylists, and he had become all but impervious to the whole crazy carnival. And then this had descended on him, and he finds himself looking away quickly and hiding his smirk like a twenty year old.

There's a bench under a large tree perhaps fifteen yards from the lake, and he decides it will do. Dropping his body gracelessly onto it, he takes a few gulps from the bottle and coughs at the burn of it in his throat. Laying out his free hand on his thigh, he wiggles his fingers just to make sure. Knowing that they are his hands, and they still obey his brain, and they are only very faintly painful- knowing all of that is not at all the same as believing any of it. Snow might as well have branded him and been done with it. It couldn't have been any more disfiguring or degrading than _this_.

"Hello, beautiful," a sultry male voice intrudes. "Mind if I join you?"

Haymitch looks up, fixing a snarky smile on his face. "Piss off, jackass," he drawls, playing up his district accent. His 'leave-me-alone' persona, call it the Crude Redneck, usually sends all but the most stubborn so-called fans pattering away with a cavalcade of offended clucks and ruffled feathers.

Finnick O'dair stands several paces away, smiling back cheekily and practically oozing sex appeal. Haymitch flicks his eyes away for a second and shrugs one shoulder minutely. _Didn't mean you._ Although it's clear enough that Finnick is not taking the words to heart, anyway.

"Finnick." He nods a greeting and takes another drink.

"Haymitch." Finnick stretches out his name as though rolling it across his tongue and savoring each letter. Now that they've acknowledged each other, he comes within reach and sits on the other end of the bench under the tree. "They've prettied you up, haven't they? Let's see those hands."

Haymitch tucks his free hand under his jacket. "Don't be an ass."

"Don't be a drama queen," Finnick returns promptly.

Haymitch growls. "You think I can't take you on, Finnick?"

"Ah, the tedious 'outraged guy' bit. It's just your hands, Haymitch." Finnick leans towards him, lowering his voice insinuatingly. "It's not like I'm going to _rape_ you."

Taken aback by the bluntness of it, Haymitch looks away across the park. "Bloody hell, you're such a bastard," he mutters.

"Oh, aren't we using that word yet?"

Haymitch swallows back his anger and shame and some more vodka. Finnick's had nine years of this. If this is his way of coping, the only thing to do is put up with it. Haymitch's own plan is to somehow keep going until the kids are safe (not bloody likely) or until Snow takes them and there's nothing else he can do. One or the other, and then he'll kill himself.

"Yeah, I guess we are," he concedes. "Want to get drunk with me?" For the life of him, he can't think what else he can offer. Anyway, it's what Finnick will be expecting.

Finnick shakes his head. "Not really my thing. Want to have sex?"

He'd been right at the start. 'Piss off' had been just the right opener for this encounter.

Finnick sees his look and says, "I'm not mocking you. I'm just suggesting a little mutual comfort and commiseration. You might even like it."

"Finnick…" Haymitch stares at the grass in front of their feet for a moment. Shit, Finnick is as fucked up as he is. "Maybe you should take up drinking."

Finnick sighs, sounding almost wistful. "Worth a try…"

Haymitch conjures up what he hopes is an encouraging smile and sets the bottle on the bench between them. He doesn't want there to be any chance that Finnick's hand will touch his. It would just be really great if he could get through one night without anyone touching him. He hides both hands under his jacket.

Finnick takes a small drink. "You _like_ drinking this stuff?"

"It's an acquired taste."

They sit in silence for a few awkward minutes, watching the colored lights reflecting off the artificial lake. Genetically altered water lilies float here and there, glowing pink and orange- mutt flowers.

Haymitch shifts uncomfortably. He should say something. Finnick is watching the lilies with a small but genuine smile, as though he's never seen glowing flowers before. His look is rather too intent, and Haymitch contemplates the likelihood that he's high on something. "You don't have to do that, you know. You don't have to act like the person they pretend you are."

"I don't have to act like a slut?" Finnick clarifies, still watching the lilies and smiling.

Haymitch settles lower on the bench, hunching his shoulders defensively. "Sorry, that was patronizing bullshit."

"Yeah, funny how the labels lose their bite, isn't it? It becomes a bit like saying I've got copper hair- or gray eyes."

Haymitch, for whom the shame and humiliation is still so sharp that he's become dependent on nightly sedative injections, simply nods.

"Sometimes I just get this crazy urge to actually _choose_ who I climb into bed with," Finnick says.

Haymitch shudders. "Does it have to be in a bed? Bed isn't a great place for me," he says with gallows humor.

"Bad experience?" Finnick asks sympathetically. "Man or woman?"

"It was a man." Haymitch keeps drinking to steady himself. "He fucked me on my back with my knees up against my chest. And I let him do it." He laughs darkly. "Like saying I've got gray eyes."

"I got raped while bending over the back of a sofa last night. Do you think I resisted?"

"You can't, can you?"

They both stare hard at the mutt lilies.

"If you change your mind, I come here most evenings when I'm in the Capitol." Finnick picks up one of Haymitch's damaged hands and this time Haymitch lets him. Finnick examines the glittering white roses and then lets it go. He brushes his hand off on his pants. "You should think about it."


	17. Dearly Beloved

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, Cursed Moon Blade!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 17**

This may be their last moment alone before it happens. Peeta can hear the music filtering through the thick mahogany doors. It's a lively, pretty song. The singer has an unusual accent, something with rolled, purring r's and hard vowels. She's clearly not Capitol, not by birth anyway. Her voice soars above the flutes and piano. A love song, of course. It's either a very fitting accompaniment for what he's about to do, or it's a sign that this is hands-down the _worst_ thing he could do in this moment.

Attired in her wedding dress and jewels, Katniss looks stunning. She's facing the doors, waiting for them to open and usher her down the path. Now that the moment is upon her, she's calm and composed. Just beyond these doors is a wide, scarlet-carpeted aisle; she will walk down it. There's nowhere else for her to go from here except down the scarlet path.

"Katniss?" Peeta says, and she turns toward him. Her movements are paradoxically infused with preternatural stillness. His words flee, and they just look at each other in their glittering finery. Peeta is wondering what's going on behind those bright gray eyes, fearing her response to what he has to say, and doubting everything. Maybe he should just say something safe and expected and inane, something like 'You look beautiful.' Then she would turn back to the doors, and they could both ignore his impious interruption.

"Katniss, I need to ask you something," he says instead. He won't be a coward, not now. He can't be.

They're both too young for this. They're not ready. They're not ready to be married, and they're _years_ away from having the emotional equipment to be parents. Peeta had always supposed he would marry and have kids someday, without ever really thinking about it. That was far in the future, and he hadn't even settled on any realistic prospect for the girl he would have a family with yet. He'd thought he had time.

"Alright," Katniss says in a tone which clearly indicates that nothing he could say could possibly matter in this moment. "Ask."

He's not ready to be married and not ready to be an expectant father. But Katniss wasn't ready to be pregnant, nor to lose her virginity on the order of a twisted, sadistic dictator. And no one could ever be ready for what's been done to Haymitch.

So, ready or not, he can't be a teenager anymore. They can't just keep being three messed up 'teenagers' struggling to keep their heads above the tar. He takes a deep breath.

"Katniss Everdeen, will you marry me?"

Her eyes widen. Momentarily speechless, she looks down at her elaborate dress. "Do I have a choice?"

Inwardly, Peeta winces. "I guess not." That's a weak answer, a coward's answer. Say it out. "No, you don't. And I'm sorry about that. But you're a brave, extraordinary person. You deserve a real proposal, at the very least."

Katniss casts a look at the doors, and then looks back at Peeta. "I didn't mean it like that," she says quietly, as though confiding a secret to him. She sighs and casts about for words. "It's just-" There are no right words. "Let's not make this anything other than what it is, alright?"

"I would have proposed to you eventually," Peeta tells her, hoping she will hear him. They don't have much time left. "I hate how this is happening, but I don't hate the idea of marrying you." There's ice in her stare, and he should really stop before this gets any worse. "What I mean is- under other circumstances, marrying you would have been one of the happiest days of my life." Her silence is unbroken.

Peeta turns toward the door, shoulders slumping. This is all a sham, a continuation of a popular love story, just an ongoing television show for gossip-hungry Capitolites. That's all it will ever be.

"Peeta-" Katniss starts to say something, and in that moment the doors swing slowly outward. They both startle a little.

Then Peeta smiles and takes her arm, fixing his eyes on the end of the aisle. President Snow waits for them there. His own well-known enigmatic half-smile seems to widen for a second and become gloating and malicious. It's gone in a flash, and Peeta assumes he imagined the change. Snow's altogether too wily for such a display in such a public place.

Katniss fixes her own smile in place as they begin their slow walk down the aisle. "Yes, I will," she murmurs in a light, casual tone that will give away nothing to anyone who overhears. "Thank you."

Peeta nods, carrying on her ruse. But he can feel his face relax into a more genuine smile.

They reach the end of the aisle and stop before Snow, Katniss to the right and Peeta to the left. Effie steps up to Katniss, holding a necklace of red and white roses woven together with thin gold wire. Katniss bends slightly and bows her head while Effie drapes it over her. Effie steps back.

There's a few seconds of waiting silence. Peeta looks at Haymitch, trying to send him a message with his eyes. The four of them had rehearsed this just last night.

Haymitch looks bizarre and thoroughly unlike himself. His hair is tucked back on the right to show off the line of diamonds that covers the entire edge of his ear. The one he'd torn out in a hotel room weeks ago has been replaced. His sleeves are turned up to just below the bend of his arms. The roses tattooed there are stark white and dazzling with silver glitter. His hands clutch a black velvet-covered box. His hands are shaking, which only makes the glitter flash more prominently.

"The ring, please," Snow says in a mildly humorous tone. There's an appreciative titter from the audience. Belatedly, Haymitch takes two jerky steps toward Peeta and holds out the box. He had been holding the small box in both hands in order to steady himself as much as he could. When he extends the one hand by itself it shakes so violently that Peeta has to make two grabs for the box before he catches it. The laughter is louder this time. They think he's drunk again. Peeta can see him sweating even through the make-up they've layered on to hide it. And by the way he keeps his eyes half-closed, it's clear the light is hurting him.

Haymitch steps back and Snow begins his speech.

"My fellow Capitolites, citizens of Panem- the long awaited day has arrived! Today we all bear witness to the marriage of two young people who have truly inspired us. They fought with courage and with honor in the 74th Hunger Games, becoming the only joint Victors Panem has ever had. Or _shall_ ever have," he adds, his good-natured humor reaching out to include the entire audience. There's a burst of spontaneous applause, accompanied by not-a-few cheers. He lets it continue for a moment, and then raises a hand for silence. "But Katniss and Peeta achieved even more than that. Amidst the pageantry of the Games and the excitement of the Arena, they found that rarest crown of all- true love." Whistles and cheers from the audience, many of them now leaning forward. They're eating this up.

As though struck by the impulse at the same moment, Katniss and Peeta lean towards each other and kiss. They separate quickly, but Peeta keeps hold of Katniss's hand.

"Now, now," Snow chides laughingly. "You aren't married quite yet."

"Sorry," Peeta mutters through a silly grin, ducking his head a little to be sure his collar mike picks it up. Katniss doesn't manage to blush as Effie had suggested, but she grins and ducks her head for a second.

"In the weeks since, we have all shared in their joy as they grew closer. It was two weeks ago today that they contacted me at my office to request special permission to get married as soon as possible. Their call actually interrupted a rather important meeting!" He pauses to give the audience time to enjoy this image. The thoughtless impropriety of Districters! How silly! "Well, our Star-Crossed Lovers are a bit young, but I think you'll all agree with me when I say they are a perfect match. What better marriage partner for a Victor than another Victor! And if you had seen their call two weeks ago I doubt you could have brought yourselves to make them wait two more years, either. So, here they are, about to make their everlasting commitment to each other. Peeta?"

Turning toward Katniss, Peeta tries to steel himself for whatever expression will be in her eyes. It's not as bad as he expected. She smiles back at him, and her beautiful gray orbs are deep and unknowable. Looking into those eyes feels like falling down with his feet still firmly planted on the floor. It's more like flying, maybe. It's indescribable. Then she bats her eyes at him, and he's able to continue.

"I take you, Katniss, as the loving, true-hearted, caring person you are and will always be. We will celebrate many more triumphs together as we spend our lives with each other. I will love you through all our years and all that life brings us.

"I love you unconditionally and without hesitation. As a family we will create a home filled with laughter and light. We are far more together than we could ever have been alone. Today I choose you to be my wife and offer myself in return.

"I will share in your dreams and strive alongside you to bring glory to our District, and to Panem. Let us be partners, friends, and lovers today and all of the days that follow."

When her turn comes, Katniss's voice is even and her smile unfaltering. She'd thought Peeta was going to freeze up for a moment there. But he had carried the performance, just like he always does. By the second sentence she'd caught on that that long pause was part of his flawless act, meant to convey awe or adoration or something. She'd spent the next couple of lines smiling and trying to recall if she'd held up her end or not. Had she kept smiling? She hadn't done anything stupid like mouth his lines at him, had she? She can't remember. She decides it doesn't matter anyway. The entire audience would have been so busy drooling over Peeta in that moment that she could very likely have crept away unnoticed. If she'd pushed Effie into her place in passing, she might not have been missed for several minutes.

"I take you, Peeta, to be my husband, my constant friend, and my lover from this day forward. I promise to love you, to laugh with you, and to cherish you for the rest of our lives.

"You are my one true love. My love for you will grow greater each day. Today I give you my hand and my heart. I choose you to be my friend, my lover, the father of my children, and my husband. I am yours, now and forever.

"I eagerly anticipate the chance to grow together, for the glory of District 12 and all of Panem.

"Panem today."

"Panem tomorrow," Peeta replies.

"Panem forever," they say in unison.

"The ring," Snow prompts.

Peeta snaps open the black velvet box. The ring is large and elaborate: a twist of platinum set with a ruby cut to resemble a glittering flame and traced with lines of diamond. It's beautiful in its own startling way. She could never wear something like this in 12. It's beautiful, and it's the most Capitol ring she's ever seen.

Katniss holds out her hand and Peeta slips it onto her finger.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife," Snow says ceremonially. "And _now_, you may kiss the bride, my boy."

Involuntarily, Peeta bristles at the mocking words. He doesn't want to kiss Katniss on the command of this man who is well on his way to destroying everything Peeta cares about. He's done performing, at least for now. This travesty that should have been his wedding has gone on long enough. He'll just give her a quick peck on the lips and then they can get out of here. And maybe someday Katniss will forgive him for his collusion in all of this.

In that second, something makes him look over at Haymitch. Haymitch is shifting from foot to foot, barely able to keep his balance. His arms are crossed and his hands tightly grip the fabric of his shirt. Even so, Peeta can see them shaking. He doesn't look up, but he seems to sense Peeta's eyes on him. He gives a single distinct nod.

Peeta looks back at Katniss, wraps his arms around her and kisses her deeply. She kisses him back, and they try to block out the cheers and whistles that erupt all around them. There's too much at stake to do anything else.


	18. Jumping In

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Warning: This is another M-rated chapter. It contains non-con. If you're too young for such content, please do not read this.

Note: I've adopted the idea of poetry as Haymitch's 'talent' from the excellent story 'Haymitch's Games', by Hufflelit. It's too cool an idea not to use. But, alas, _not_ originally my idea.

Note 2: Thanks for the follow, Branbran0206! And to all of you who have read this far, may you have an interesting 2015…

**Capitol Nights, chapter 19**

He lifts one ruined hand and knocks on the door, one-two-three mechanical raps. His heart is thumping unpleasantly and his head feels swimmy. He'd been to Wenceslas last night, and that one's like a twenty-four hour bug. Last night had been the worst yet, really one for the album. It's stuck in his head now, throwing out sensations and words with the unavoidable madness of a strobe light.

And so he waits, eyes on the blood red carpet and hands tucked unconsciously under his arms. His hair has been washed and brushed into a state of silky iridescence, now always put back on the right to show the diamonds. He shakes as he stands in the hall, and once he turns in a quick, tight circle. He hopes it's a man tonight, one who will let him just lie still. Because he can't, he really doesn't think he can…

The door's not a wall anymore. He walks forward, hugging himself, letting the serene, modulated voice roll over him. Stopping, he begins to undress. Something is in the way; his hands are caught and held.

"Hold on there, Haymitch. Not yet."

He knows that voice from somewhere. Is it Wenceslas again? It shouldn't be, not two nights in a row.

"Are you on something?" A rough hand grabs his chin and forces his head up. Unwillingly he meets the eyes of his owner for the next three hours. He hates this. Why do they always want him to look at them?

"Haymitch?" The man sighs; Haymitch guesses it as frustration, maybe disappointment. "Speak," he orders.

"Fine," Haymitch says. "Are you going to fuck me or not?" _What are you doing? Snap out of it! Protect the kids. That's all that matters._ His mind judders back into frame with a clang of rusty gears. The john will always show you what they want if you pay attention. He waits for the hint, readying himself to play along.

"All in good time. Come over here and have a seat."

From what Haymitch can see, the entire hotel 'suite' is just one huge bedroom. There are no chairs or couches in evidence, not even the ever-popular mahogany escritoire with its overly ornate bench. But then, if there was other furniture the room's occupants probably wouldn't notice it. The bed is a huge circular monstrosity that completely arrests the attention. Covered in layers of black silk, it must be twelve feet across. There it stands, all by itself in the middle of the room, the Isle of Fuckery. Haymitch imagines hundreds of other men and women being fucked on this very bed. How many of them had been whores like him? How many had just wanted it to be over?

"On _that_?" he asks, and rolls his eyes. "Tell me that isn't a mirror on the ceiling."

"I'm afraid so," the man says, sounding rueful. "Ostentatious is what I was aiming for."

Haymitch licks his lips, the way a wild rabbit sometimes does when it smells something distasteful. He strides over and sits on the edge of the bed, patting the sheets next to him in invitation. "Join me. We won't get anything done with you way over there."

The man smiles cynically and takes the offered spot. "Do you even recognize me?"

"Yeah, sure I do. You're the rich Capitolite who's going to bugger me on this particular evening. I never forget a face."

"Not an entirely wrong answer. I am rich, and I am going to have you. But I'd hoped we could talk first."

"Whatever. It's your time."

"Look at me, Haymitch. Really focus. Don't you remember me?"

Haymitch winces as though in sudden pain. His gray eyes flick up past the man, towards the ceiling. Sinking back down, they pause.

"Plutarch Heavensbee," he says dully.

"Yes," Plutarch says, relieved. He had almost given this up as a complete dead end. The man before him seems a lot more addled than he had been led to believe, and much less sharp than he would have thought based on the couple of times they had spoken before. "Very good."

"Nice one." Haymitch appears to be talking to the empty air, and Plutarch tells himself that surely they wouldn't send the man to clients if he was high on something. "The Head Gamemaker himself. This'll be something to think about while I'm watching next year's kids die in the arena."

"How far would you go to put an end to the Hunger Games forever?" Plutarch asks out of the blue.

It brings Haymitch up short. It's a trick, almost certainly a trick. But what reason would Snow have for sending Plutarch to trick him? Snow already knows he hates the Capitol and their sadistic, ruinous Games. For Snow, Haymitch's impotent hatred is part of the fun. Why else would his hands have been branded with Snow's white roses? They killed his family and then made him into a whore anyway. Life served as a warning to the other slaves.

"You don't have to answer right now," Plutarch is saying. "Just think about it."

"Anything," he says abruptly. "I'd do anything." Then he sits back and waits to see what Plutarch will do now.

"Good. There's an underground, did you know that?" Plutarch's voice is casual even as his eyes probe Haymitch, measuring and assessing.

Haymitch twitches one rose-covered hand side to side in negation and then drops it back to the sheet. He's very aware of being judged, and he's ashamed but also furious. Here's what will happen next: This pampered, spoiled Capitolite will tease him with lies about a so-called resistance until he gets whatever reaction he's looking for; then he'll rape him to remind him that he's powerless, just a toy for others to play with.

But what if it's real?

"There's an idea that you might be useful. You and Katniss and Peeta," Plutarch continues. "So I'm offering you a chance to be part of the resistance."

"The kids won't do it. They've got families to protect, especially now," Haymitch says in a neutral tone. Don't give anything away. Just let it play itself out. But he's interested in spite of himself. Where's the angle?

"I think you might be underestimating them. But you're here, so we'll work with you first. Will you help us put an end to the Games and get rid of President Snow?"

"How could I help with all that?" Haymitch laughs and gestures around the room.

"Well, you're a proven killer."

Yeah, he is that. Fifty-four people and counting. Fifty-one of them had been kids.

"Killing kids is my Talent," he tells Plutarch with a shark-like grin. "That and really bad poetry. But they don't make me read poetry anymore."

"They don't want to showcase your Talent because it would make people curious about your Games. You'll know, of course, that your Games are the only ones past the first two that have never been shown in reruns?"

Haymitch nods. "Filigree should have won."

"But she didn't. Are you ready to give me your answer?"

"Who do you want me to kill?" Haymitch asks, to move this along.

"You don't need to know that yet. It will be someone highly placed in Snow's government. And quite a few persons like yourself will be glad he's gone."

"Okay."

"Okay? Is that a yes, you'll join us?"

"Yes, I'll join you." The words clang in the air with dreadful finality, and he suddenly snaps wide gray eyes to the door, waiting for the flood of Capitol Guardsmen to crash through. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head, you tawdry little clown.

"No one can spy on us here. We've made sure of that," Plutarch reassures. The bright terror in Haymitch's eyes heartens him. He's always been an astute judge of people, and he can see that Haymitch doesn't trust him. That's fine, for now. It's to be expected. But he needs Haymitch to _believe_ him, to take this seriously. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Haymitch drags his eyes away from the door through sheer force of will. He's in it now, both feet are in the cement, and it's much too late to worry about Plutarch tricking him. He'll have to take a chance on the Capitolite.

It's worth it, he tells himself for the first time. If there's any chance that it's true, then it's worth it.

"What now?" Haymitch asks.

"Now I'm going to have you. Your handler will probably check, and it would look very bad if I didn't."

"Right," Haymitch says resignedly. "How do you want to do this?" He begins undressing again, and this time Plutarch doesn't stop him. Instead, Plutarch brings forth a flask from his inner pocket.

"Here, drink this."

Haymitch accepts the flask; unscrews the lid and sniffs at the contents. They have an oddly sweet aroma. "Sleep syrup?" he asks, although that isn't precisely what it smells like.

"You're on a need-to-know basis for the time being."

Haymitch sets the flask aside. "Look, I can't just blindly obey you. It makes my hands hurt."

Plutarch nods, considering the statement. Those roses are horrible. Although Haymitch isn't to be trusted with such information yet, it was largely the tattoos that had convinced his first contact, Finnick, to recommend him. Even as one of Snow's whores, being managed by one of the most abusive handlers on the job- an asshole named Balthamos who only takes on older male Victors in need of breaking in- even in such a crushing position, he had managed to royally piss off no less a person than President Snow. Whatever else is going on in his head, he still has the guts to fight.

"I'll be your only contact until you move up a step. You need to trust me."

If there's even a chance it's true… And he finds that he's starting to really believe Plutarch. Weak, stupid, pathetic whore that he is. Have you still not learned the difference between what you need to be true and what is true? Here comes a candle to light you to bed, sweetheart.

Shut up, shut up.

"Real?" he asks himself and Plutarch and Wenceslas who isn't actually present on this particular night (but who will always be with him). Bullshit, two of the three agree.

He gulps down the contents of the flask like the liquor he wishes he had. It's sweet-tasting, smooth, and very cold.

"Excellent."

"Aw, not so much," Haymitch cuts him off, his voice poisonous and mocking. "Putting things in my mouth and swallowing is something I've practiced a lot recently." Instantly regretting the jibe, he looks down at the sheets. He feels hot and thinks he might actually be blushing. How stupid would that be?

"It's only a sedative. It will last for an hour or so."

He looks up. "Why?"

"We can't work together effectively if you associate me with being raped. This way is better. You won't mind so much while I'm having you, and you won't remember it in any detail."

Like all Capitol drugs, it hits fast and strong. One minute he's shrugging out of his shirt and not letting himself watch Plutarch watching him. And then, with no intervening time at all, he's lying stretched out on the silk. The shiny black stuff stretches on and on in front of him, further than he can reach. He slides one arm out in front of him a few inches and then gives up. Best not to move. Closing his eyes, he wonders if this is what dying feels like. If so, it's okay. It doesn't hurt. He hopes he isn't dying, but there's just very little emotion connected to the thought.

When Haymitch starts to list to the side, Plutarch catches him by the upper arms and pushes him backwards onto the bed. The blond man turns onto his side and draws his legs up so that only his bare feet hang over the edge. His arms move a little in front of him, reminding Plutarch of a dog having a dream. His eyes are half-open and unfocused. He is on his left side, and Plutarch leans over him and brushes back his golden mane so that the line of diamonds glitters in the light. Even half curled up on his side, the custom-tailored trousers accentuate his narrow hips and leanly muscled thighs. He's thin in a healthy-looking way, the outline of his ribs showing plainly against his skin without jutting. His chest is covered with a thin layer of fine, tawny fur. Picture of an adult male in optimal condition. This lifestyle seems to agree with him on a physical level, at least.

Plutarch takes off his own shoes and socks before undoing Haymitch's fly. "Lift your hips a little," he instructs, expecting no response. There isn't any, but it's easy enough to pull the trousers and silk underwear down and off of him, leaving him naked.

As a test, Plutarch gives Haymitch's bare ass a firm slap. Haymitch makes a quiet, slurred sound that is no more translatable than the whine of a dog. It might have been meant as 'ow' or 'fuck off', or anything else. What it means to Plutarch is that he's ready.

Plutarch drags Haymitch to the center of the bed and arranges him prone with his head turned to the side. "Don't want you to suffocate, do we?" he murmurs. He takes out his own half-hard cock and begins to stroke it to full hardness. Taking someone who is more or less unconscious isn't very exciting. This isn't about sex, and it's necessary to do it this way, but still…

This will go a lot quicker if he makes it a bit more enjoyable for himself, and Haymitch won't remember anyway. He hesitates another few seconds, waiting for sensible objections to occur to him. When none do, he begins spanking the other man. He keeps going until Haymitch's ass is a deep shade of pink. By then the man is whimpering and twitching as he tries to fight off the sedative enough to move. It's enough of a reaction to be getting on with. And it can't have been that bad for Haymitch, because once Plutarch stops it takes less than a minute for him to succumb to the drug again.

Once he's still and quiet, Plutarch lubes himself up and uses one hand to guide the head of his cock into position. Grunting, he begins to push into the man. Perhaps it's that being entered hurts less than being spanked, or maybe Haymitch is used to how this feels by now. In any case, he doesn't respond to it. Plutarch rides him, slowly at first and then faster, watching intently as his cock slides in and out of Haymitch's reddened ass. After only about ten minutes he pushes in all the way and cums deep inside Haymitch. He gives the man a couple more short thrusts as the aftershocks flow through him. As he pulls out, he tells himself that they're covered now if Balthamos checks. And Balthamos will almost certainly check, after all. It was necessary.

Haymitch's eyes are shut, now. The sedative wouldn't have caused unconsciousness, but it's very likely he's fallen asleep. Plutarch keeps an eye on him as he cleans himself up and puts his clothes back in order. They still have almost two hours until Haymitch's handler will come to collect him. There's time to let him wake up on his own.

Going to the mini-bar, Plutarch fixes himself a screwdriver and sits down to wait for the newest member of the Resistance to sleep off the effects of the drugs he'd had to be given. "Viva la Resistance," he mutters ironically. Now that there's nothing to do but reflect on things, he's back to doubting whether Haymitch will be any help at all. He would have been formidable once, no doubt, but that had probably been a couple thousand drinks ago. Twelve isn't known for breeding fighters, anyway. Just look at the abysmal showing they almost always make in the arena.

Katniss has potential, they all agree on that. Given the right guidance, she could be a powder keg. The Resistance badly wants her, and if Haymitch can be used to help get her on board that will be enough. And if the old sharp intelligence and defiant bravery can be kindled in him again… well, who's to say?

Speaking of, the man's already coming around. He turns back onto his side, hips slanting ludicrously up due to the pillows.

"Are you waking up, sleeping beauty?" Plutarch calls. Already?

Haymitch sits up slowly, knocking the pillows aside. "Damn it, how rough _were_ you?" he grumbles.

"You apparently have a high tolerance for the sedative."

"Yeah, figures." He looks down at himself, naked except for the diamonds in his ear and the gold cuff on his wrist. "How long do I have?"

"Another hour and forty-five minutes," Plutarch says, sipping his drink.

Haymitch sighs. Too early to get dressed unless the john tells him to. Judging by how much his ass hurts, he's almost certainly bleeding. Balthamos will like that, sick bastard that he is. Tight as a teenage virgin, and bleeding like one too. He hates himself. What's the point of living if this is all he is?

He sits there facing Plutarch, naked, and doesn't even pull the sheets up around himself. Plutarch feels a sort of weary disgust, which he tries to ignore. Those from the Districts simply aren't like Capitolites. To use an insensitive but accurate phrase, they don't know any better. Finnick will sometimes hold entire conversations while lounging naked in an armchair, a knowing leer on his tanned face. Unlike many Capitolites, Plutarch believes they can be civilized in time. But the first thing is to do away with the system that keeps them in the position of animals and slaves.

"Is Katniss really pregnant?" he asks.

"Yeah, she really is," Haymitch replies. "Congratcha-fuckin-lations, huh?"

"Is it yours?"

Now Haymitch does grab the sheet and yank it up over his lap. "Why the hell does everyone ask that? What's _wrong_ with you people? You think maybe Peeta and I butted heads like billy goats until I knocked him out and then rutted with the girl?"

Plutarch raises his hands. "Calm yourself. I was only asking."

"The baby is my punishment for getting in Thread's way, and the kids' punishment for having anything to do with me, and above all a great big slap down from His All-Powerful Highness Snow," Haymitch says, breathing hard.

"They didn't want to have a baby?"

"They were ordered to have one, by way of me. I hope you all enjoy the show."

Plutarch nods, filing the information away to consider later.

"I'll meet with you again soon and tell you how you can begin serving the Resistance."

"Sure," Haymitch says with a snort. "In bed, is my guess. Not that I'm complaining. 'Camp follower' is a better title than 'Snow's whore'."

"Given our respective positions, I could hardly meet you for brunch," Plutarch admonishes. "If you'd think about it rationally, I'm sure you'd be pleased with this arrangement."

"That's one hell of an ego you've got."

"Not at all. But I doubt if any of the other men and women who pay to have you allow you to sleep through it."

Haymitch shudders as the memories of last night seize him in their teeth. Hot water rains down on him. Hands roam all over his chest and thighs. He tries to focus on the hands but he can't, not even for a few seconds. _I knew you'd like it, sweetheart._

"Plutarch," he says roughly.

"Yes?"

"When you fucked me, did I get hard?" he asks in the same rough, growling voice.

"No, not at all," Plutarch responds without hesitation, a little disturbed. "Remember where you are, old fellow."

"No, of course not. I was drugged," Haymitch tells himself. His eyes drift up to the ceiling again. "You don't have to drug me next time."


	19. Come With Me

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note 1: Somewhat lengthy 'notes' follow, but most of it is in reply to a somewhat lengthy review. No warnings this time, so feel free to skip ahead to the story.

Note 2: Thanks for the follow, Bella184ever!

Note 3: Thanks for the review, Cursed Moon Blade. Seeing at least part of the 50th Games in the movies would have been awesome, but I'm not sure they could have done any better than the Youtube version by MainstayPro. BTW, have you watched 'The Hanging Tree'? It's by the same group. It's very effective, and just terribly sad.

What's the title of the Quarter Quell fic you mentioned? If you wouldn't mind IM'ing it to me, I'd love to check it out.

As to Haymitch slash fics, they certainly are a rare breed. I guess because the only 'major' male characters one could pair him with would be Peeta, Gale, and Finnick? And I imagine it would be tricky indeed to write Haymitch/Peeta or Haymitch/Gale without getting OOC. Still, more writers should pick a pairing and take a stab at it. I'd like to see more of it.

Well, I know of a total of six stories (which has to be some kind of record low for slash fics in a major fandom involving a major character). Of those, I think three are well-written and in-character. Don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, but here goes:

'Gods and Monsters', by TheOnlyPotato- Finnick/Haymitch- Mostly Finnick angst.

'Two Shots Too Many', by Mithrigil- Haymitch/Chaff- available on (archive of our own dot org)

'To The Victors', by Isis- Haymitch/Cinna- available on (archive of our own dot org)

Probably there are a few others somewhere that I missed. Recommendations welcome!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 19**

He jerks awake, yelling in panic, lashing out blindly with open hands in an instinctive 'get-away-from-me'. The terror he feels in those first few seconds after waking up bypasses all rational thought, and if there really was someone attacking him this flailing wouldn't do him a damn bit of good. The crucial seconds have passed him by before he's with it enough to make a fist, or even to focus on the other person in the room.

"Katniss," he says, sinking back into the chair as his heart trip-hammers from the adrenaline jolt. The next layer of awareness clicks in, and he shoves his hands under his jacket with an exhalation that is almost a curse.

She looks down on him with cold impatience. "I brought you gloves."

"Gloves?" He flexes his hands against the soft fabric of his shirt, feeling the slight stiffness in them.

"To cover Snow's brand."

He winces, and on the heels of that he feels himself blush in shame. There's no prevaricating with Katniss, never has been. He brings his hands out and looks at them. They're clad in black gauntlets of some supple material he is unfamiliar with. The cuffs are elongated enough to cover all of it, secured with a strap and a silver buckle at their ends. The fingers are truncated just before the first knuckle.

"Thanks," he says. The word falls from his lips slow and careful, as though he fears mispronouncing it.

"It was as much for me as for you," she says back.

Haymitch lays his head down on the table. "What do you want?"

"Are they raping you?" The icy disgust in her voice hits him like a hard slap.

"Peeta told you," he says. Peeta. _Peeta_ betrayed him. Well, that was unexpected. "Goddamn him," he tells the scarred tabletop.

"He didn't tell me. I finally figured it out. They're raping you."

He looks at her, eyes glittering redly. "Yeah. What's the matter, honey? Have you had a little shock?" His voice drips with bitter sarcasm.

"Don't call me 'honey'." She looks around the room, revolted. Her eyes light on him again, flit away. "Why don't you call me 'sweetheart' anymore?"

"I think we've done enough sharing for one day." He waves a hand at her as though shooing away a fly, or a rat, or a damn _bird_.

"You want me to leave, you-" She seems to fish for an appropriate pejorative. "You bastard." He favors her with a bitter smile, because that was an unexpectedly kind choice. "Want me to leave you to your thoughts?"

"I don't give a damn what you do." He gets to his feet, a bit clumsy from the remnants of the alcohol, and lumbers towards the cabinets. If he's sober enough to walk and to feel the girl's disgusted gaze burning into him, clearly he didn't drink enough earlier.

"Come with me," she says from behind him.

He selects a dark brown bottle and gives it a practiced tilt. "You know, working yourself into these little hissy fits is probably bad for the baby. What would Peeta say?"

She sniffles a little and he upends the bottle and chugs as much of it as he can before he's forced to stop, gasping and coughing. They stare at each other in silent hostility for a moment. He holds out the bottle to her and she shakes her head.

"It's bad for the baby," she says, matching his bitterness with her own.

"Just as well. Who knows what I've picked up by now."

"That stuff would kill anything."

The thought seems to strike them both at the same time, and Haymitch watches Katniss's eyes turn to him in dark speculation. "You'd think, wouldn't you?" he says, then takes another long drink and smirks at her. "Nothing is ever that easy."

"Come with me," she says again.

He shrugs. "Yeah, sounds like fun. Let me just put on a dry shirt." Setting the bottle down on the counter, he pulls his shirt over his head and drops it to the floor. There are a few piles of clothes scattered around the kitchen, and he goes to the nearest one and begins pawing through it. Her eyes weigh on his back. She's watching him, not moving or speaking, just watching.

"Turn around," he snaps.

She scoffs, a harsh and derisive sound. "You're a prostitute. How does it matter if I see you with your shirt off?"

"Those baby hormones are certainly doing a number on you, _honey_. Have they decided whether they're going to air the birth live on national TV yet?" he sneers, finally snatching a shirt from one of the piles. It reeks of spilled alcohol and sweat, but he'll be damned if he's going to put back on the shirt she just threw a pitcher of water all over. He pulls the shirt on, wrinkling his nose.

"Are you ready?" she asks, still watching him as though he might just sort of slink out of the room if she looks away. He must be morbidly fascinating to her this morning. He can understand her stare. It's not every day that you learn that the man who was supposed to protect you can't even defend himself.

She's wearing her father's old hunting jacket over a faded brown sweater and pants worn thin at the knees. Judging by how loose the sweater is on her, it might once have been her father's, too. This ensemble, Denial in Textiles, is finished off by a pair of scuffed lace-up boots.

"Just who are you supposed to be, honey?" he taunts her.

"Breeding stock," she answers back unsmilingly. "That, and a Capitol mouthpiece."

There's nothing to say to that, so he meets her eyes for the first time in weeks and says, "I'm sorry."

It surprises her. She'd expected vitriol and bitterness and disgust. She'd thought that was all they had left for each other. She blinks and looks away, rolling her words around in her head and testing each as she makes her halting reply. "It's okay. Really, it's okay. And- I know who you are now." That's not enough. She could tell him that she hates him for letting them do that to him. Or that she can never, ever repay him for saving her and Peeta from this. She could just tell him that she can't look at him without thinking about him servicing one of his _clients_. He disgusts her, and she can't help that, and he's too quick not to see it.

But she can't forget who _she_ is now, either. Her hand goes to her belly, and she can feel the gentle curve of it under her dad's old sweater. She folds her arms tightly under her breasts, pinching herself through the heavy cotton. She's been bred. Bred on Snow's orders, and by the male Snow had chosen. Just as though she were one of the silky little lapdogs Capitolites keep as pets. So what's more shameful- being a bed slave to the rich, or being part of the breeding program?

They're both ruined.

"Are you ready to go?" she asks one more time.

"Yeah, sweetheart, I guess I am." That one word comes out in Wenceslas's voice, much more cultured than his own and strangely accented. He's here; he's always here. But Haymitch has grown used to him, and he won't be interested in Katniss. S'okay.

He sets the bottle of liquor, still half full, on the table's wrecked surface. They'll destroy the table, before they move the next Victor in here. Years and decades of passing out here with a knife clutched in his left hand have rendered it as irreparable as he is. Looking at the table and the bottle, he tries to think of something else. There should be something more, shouldn't there?

She waits patiently through this. When he at last realizes there's nothing else to leave and nothing else that he can do, he comes toward her and she turns and leads him out of the house. It's early morning, the first hint of dawn on the horizon doing nothing to dispel the bitter cold. A thin rind of moon still hangs in the sky, and the ground is powdered with fresh snow. The Village is dark and motionless.

At the fence Katniss pauses, standing stock-still and listening. Haymitch walks right past her. He hesitates, for just a second before his gloved hand reaches out and grasps the wire, stumbles a little. But still he wraps his hand around it, tensing and closing his gray eyes. Nothing happens, and after a couple of seconds he shoves his way through. Looking around, he takes a deep breath. For the first time in his life, he is outside the fence without a team of Capitolite handlers. He'd never suspected it was this easy.

The wires _zing_ as Katniss climbs through and lets go of them. She walks on in silence, ignoring Haymitch as he looks around. When she's almost out of sight he begins to follow her again. The cries of birds and the rustling of small animals seem very loud around them.

"Well, here we are," she says, stopping and looking at the tree in front of them. He comes forward and stops beside her. All this way he's followed at her heels, neither of them speaking. He's kept his eyes on the ground, following her footprints and never letting his gaze stray above her calves. In return, she has not looked back even once. She's endured the heavy, trudging footsteps behind her and the rough sound of his breathing in the frosty air, and she has kept her eyes resolutely ahead. She always was braver than him.

The tree waits by itself in a small clearing, hemmed in on all sides by thorn bushes and brush and scrub trees. It is very tall, but the striking thing about it is its multitude of thick, twisting branches. It is winter-bare, and the bark it pitch black.

"Look," she whispers very softly. He does, and freezes beside her when he sees it. A single mockingjay is perched on one of those twisted limbs, its head cocked to the side as it regards them with one bright black eye. Both of them stare back, not daring to move or blink. Then Katniss looks over at him, a hint of a smile on her lips. For just a second she's on the verge of saying something. If she does, he'll give her hint of a smile back and nod. They'll watch until the bird flies away and then turn back and retrace their steps in the gathering dawn.

The spell breaks when their eyes meet, crashes and explodes in flames. Each sees themselves reflected back at them, and she draws away with a feline hiss of pain as he turns from her with a low growl.

"That's our branch," she says instead. "The one the mockingjay was on." She lets her shoulder bag slide down her arm and reaches in, producing two heavy coils of rope. Dropping the bag indifferently to the snow, she thrusts one of the coils at him. She doesn't look at him again, and he's grateful. Haymitch takes the rope, wrapping it around his hands and pulling at it.

"Katniss, wait." She ignores him, making for the tree with her head down. Haymitch shakes his head, kicks at the snow, and then goes after her because she's not giving him any choice. He's beginning to doubt there's any such thing as free will.

Catching up, he grabs her arm. "Katniss, goddamnit, _wait_ a minute."

She whirls around. She's very pale, but her gray eyes are dark and knowing and steady. "Don't you touch me. I think we're both filthy enough already," she says evenly.

He steps back with his hands raised, giving her his most mocking, sarcastic smile. "Don't flatter yourself, honey. Pregnant kids aren't my thing. Also, I really doubt you could afford me_._"

She looks back at him, blinking quickly. "Look, if you don't want to do this, that's fine. I thought… with everything… I thought you deserved the chance, I guess." She pauses, marshalling her thoughts. She'd never doubted he'd want to do this. She can hardly stand to be around him; seeing him for the first time after she figured it out was even worse than she'd expected. But dying alongside him seems right. He is, after everything, still some sort of family. In time, if not for Snow's fuckery, he might have become an older brother to her as he is to Peeta.

She steels herself and continues. "Go back home then, Haymitch. Don't interfere with me. I have to do this."

"So thoughtful of you," he drawls. He looks away, speaking to the ground at their feet. "Of course I want to. You can't even imagine…" Shivering, he turns away because looking at the ground just isn't sufficient anymore.

She swallows, and he hears her throat click. The coldness is gone from her voice when she gives him the few words that she has to offer. "Me, too. You can't imagine. I could never have imagined. What this is like…"

"We can't. After we're gone they'll go after Peeta."

"Don't you throw Peeta at me, not now. Anyway, they might not. I'm the problem. I'm the one they want to destroy. If I'm gone, maybe they'll leave him alone."

"Maybe," he mocks softly.

"I should have eaten those berries," she confides, looking up at the tree. "I don't know how I forgot how things are. I really thought we could beat them."

"Stupid, blind, animal hope. That's the sublime humor of it all now." And he does laugh, and for just a fleeting moment Katniss smiles. "Seventy-five years of schmucks like you and me telling ourselves 'I know it's an impossible situation, but I'm the _exception_. Oh no, they'll never get _me_.'" He performs this bit of skit with exaggerated earnestness, widening his eyes at her and nodding slightly, and quite against her will she laughs out loud.

"All of this is because of me," she affirms, a trace of mirth still in her voice. It mixes uneasily with the returning bitterness, and far off in the distance Haymitch thinks he hears approaching thunder.

"No, not all of it." He stops abruptly. He could tell her that her transmogrification into breeding stock was his idea. He could tell her that if she'd died he would have tried to make the same deal to save Peeta from Snow's machinations. If this is it, he might as well tell her that his own survival twenty-four years ago had ended up being far more ruinous than her trick with the berries.

He has nights when he wishes she had died. Without that love story (And that was his fault, too, his own damn fault. Peeta had started it, but he was the one who just had to keep pushing it), he would have had nothing to offer Snow other than himself. There would have been no deal. And he's an ass for thinking that way, an ass and everything else they say he is: selfish, immature, irresponsible, a drink-addled waste. But there are moments when he thinks he would throw the boy to the wolves if those wolves would just stop tearing at him.

He isn't even sure that he gives a damn about Peeta anymore. For a while there the kid had been sort of an enigma to him, like a puzzle his mind couldn't put down. How could anyone be that thoroughly _good_ and not make normal, shitty people like himself want to climb the walls? Almost at once, Peeta had distinguished himself from the ever-increasing circle of walking-dead kids that he remembers and regrets and counts on days when the liquor isn't enough. This one is going to give me nightmares, he'd thought- the screaming kind. Instead, Peeta had survived. And somewhere along the path from there to here, he'd become a source of strength.

Nothing good remains. Lately, Peeta's just the guy who reminds him how weak and pathetic he's become. And it's not really goodness anyway, is it? More like self-righteousness. Haymitch hates him for the pity he now sees in Peeta's looks, the care in his words and even in his movements. He's been weak most of his life: weak about the drink, weak about the kids he was supposed to help, weak in his fear of the Peacekeepers and his pure yellow-striped horror of Snow. It took Peeta to show him he was pitiful.

There are still days when he knows those two kids to be the closest he'll ever be able to come to having a family, and he knows protecting them is worth anything, or even everything. But the driving, all-consuming, dangerous _need_ to save them that forced him into Snow's office that day is only a distant memory, a bit hard to credit.

"I can't do this anymore," Katniss says. Her hand moves restlessly to her curved belly, darts away again. "I can't stand what's happening to me."

It's peaceful to have someone put it into words like that. And he wants to. She's shown him that he can die outside the fence, and _gods_, he wants to. But… Peeta. There's no way they'd let him alone. Even if Katniss dies, the Capitol will still have his parents and his brothers to use against him. He's young, handsome, and popular. He won't stand a chance.

Haymitch glances over at Katniss and shuffles the conflicting obligations that are pulling him downward like a millstone around his neck. His own survival without hers wouldn't save Peeta. Let Katniss escape? Or do whatever he has to do to protect Peeta?

Katniss is walking toward the tree again. She takes small steps now, stretching out her last moments, feeling the crunch of the frozen ground under her feet. These woods were always her only taste of freedom. Now they breathe for her, and sigh and ruffle her hair. Here was the only place her father didn't look exhausted and beaten. Here live the songs she dare not sing. Here, for a few fleeting moments, she existed outside the Capitol's reach.

She lays a hand on the dark surface of the tree where her father first spoke to her of freedom. For more than a week she's been dreaming of her father and of this tree. The only dreams she'd ever had of him before had been nightmares. She almost prefers those. She misses him so much lately.

Her father died hundreds of feet underground, in the dark, shut away from everything he'd ever loved. She bows her head and tries desperately to sense him near her.

"Can you climb?" she asks Haymitch, who is once more at her side.

"I've never tried," he tells her, looking up into the branches.

She considers him. He's not at all like her father. Is that why she really brought him, as a conduit? She thinks that might have been part of it. He's just Haymitch, though- unstable, abused, and all-but-destroyed. And… brave.

"Do this with me?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says. "They can't always win."

She reaches out and does something entirely unexpected but wholly essential for both of them. She takes his gloved hand in hers. "Last time pays for all." She lets go. "Just follow me." And she begins to climb.

Haymitch watches her for a moment, looping the rope around his shoulders as she has done. When he thinks he has it, he starts to follow her.

It's harder than it looks, but the bark is rough and by feeling around he finds places to dig in his fingers and the toes of his boots. And the branches start about ten feet up, giving him places to rest his weight. His ankles and arms ache sharply by the time he pulls himself up beside Katniss. The branch they're sitting on is thicker than the span of his shoulders. Looking down, he judges they've climbed at least fifty feet, maybe more.

Katniss holds out her rope to show him the slipknot she's tied into it. "Do you want to do your own?" she asks. "I'll watch and make sure it's right."

He understands that she's trying to give him back control. There've been too few choices, too many commands. Even in 12, too many instances of just assuming he can't, as though somehow being raped has eroded his ability to make his own decisions. And now that he's followed Katniss into these woods and followed her up this tree, she's offering to guide him through tying his own noose. So much for free will. On the other hand, at least she cares enough to try.

He unwraps the rope and hands it over. "You do it."

She efficiently ties a slipknot into his rope while he looks off through the branches. There's no reason to watch this. Tying knots will very shortly become useless knowledge for him, along with everything else.

He tries to think of Kelsee, the girl he'd once believed he would marry. But the only image of her his mind has left after all these years is the one of her crying, knowing she was about to be killed because of him. What a fool he'd been.

No. He shakes his head hard. Not that voice. Not now.

Effie, then. Think of her, safe in her apartment, beautiful and vibrant. Effie flitting from moment to moment as though the world were a field of bright and fragrant flowers. She was so amusing when she was angry that he would wile away hours deliberately provoking her. And then somehow he'd always feel compelled to be nice to her for a day or two, as if he needed to apologize or something. Not that he'd ever apologize.

For once his mind cooperates and settles on the image of Effie. He closes his eyes and he smiles.

Katniss has tied the ends of both ropes around the branch in secure double knots. "Ready?" she asks.

"Yeah." He fingers the noose and the slips it over his head, pulling the knot snug against his skin. That's one thing they'd never done- put a collar on him. But it had probably been only a matter of time.

Katniss slips her own noose on, pulling her braid out over it. As she pulls it tight she thinks of the first song her father taught her, and how his voice had made her think that the whole rest of the world must fall silent to listen.

"One," she says, catching Haymitch's gray eyes with her own.

"Two," he says, and his hand twitches as though he would reach out to her if only his mind would allow it.

"Three," she says. She slides off the branch, falling away from him. Together, he thinks. I don't want to die alone. And then he pushes off after her.

There's a sharp pain and a cracking sound as the rope pulls taut, and then all he's aware of is motion and being unable to breathe. The whole world moves around him, spinning and swaying like a gyroscope. Lights flash before his eyes, and then everything darkens. Coherent thought is impossible here at the end of the rope. He has no name, no past, no self. The only word left in his mind clangs around and rebounds in his ears. Alone, alone, alone, alone. And even that is only meaningless sounds.

Every living creature dies alone.


	20. World of Two

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 20**

He opens his eyes. It's cold. When he tries to lift his head sharp pain spikes through his neck and down his spine like a dash of icy water and he cries out helplessly. And just like that it comes back. He moves his hands and feet over the ground in front of him. Not paralyzed, then. It's a start.

He's lying on the ground in the snow deep in the woods, his neck and back throbbing, unable to even lift his head due to the pain. Apparently his suicide was less than successful. Unless he's actually dead?

Shit. Oh shit. Goddamn it to fucking hell.

"Katniss?" he calls out, his voice a harsh rasp. Fuck, it even hurts to talk. What if she's dead? What if she's dead and he survived?

He heaves himself up, crying and cursing at the pain and wondering if it's possible to have a broken neck and still somehow be able to move. It sure as hell _feels_ broken.

"Katniss?" he says again. His eyes fall on a dark shape lying next to him and for a moment he thinks it's her. Then his pain-sluggish mind supplies the reference for the image and he identifies it as the tree branch Katniss had tied their ropes to. How the hell did it break off? It had been completely solid when they were sitting on it.

He pulls himself over it, not sure if he'd make it all the way around. Just beyond it lies Katniss. She's still unconscious, but he can see her breath in the cold air.

"What a pair we are," Haymitch rasps. Can't even kill ourselves, he finishes silently. Not like anyone's listening, anyway.

He fishes around in his pocket and pulls out a small, sharp knife- a paring knife. He must have reflexively pulled at his noose while unconscious in order to get enough air, but it's still uncomfortably snug. Touching it worsens the pain, and his fingers come away wet with blood. He tries to get a grip on it to cut it loose, but it keeps slipping through his fingers. Haymitch gives up. It hurts too damn much. It'll just have to stay where it is for now.

Katniss is still wearing her necklace of rope, too, but it doesn't appear to have cut into her skin. He works a blood-slicked finger under it and pulls it up enough to cut it without also cutting her throat. She moans and weakly bats at his hand.

Katniss coughs a couple of times. "Are we dead?" she whispers.

"No, I don't think so," he rasps. "Open your eyes."

She does, and startles at the sight of him. "Are you sure?" she asks in her new, hissing voice. "You look dead."

"Hurts to talk," he hisses back at her.

Katniss gets up, gasping in pain and freezing for a second before completing the movement. Her movements are slow and stiff, but she's on her feet. Just a couple of minutes after waking up from a failed hanging, and the girl is on her feet. If he had known she had something like that in her when he first saw her standing beside Effie and trying not to cry, would he have still felt the rush of impulsive anger that had first shoved him to her side?

Haymitch tries to stand up and join her in the word of humans, actual adults that can maybe stand on two feet instead of crawling on the ground like a damn baby. His back screams and he imagines his vertebrae grinding against his spinal cord, pushing it inward and outward, the fragile column of nerves pulling taut and getting ready to snap. It's a terribly vivid, horrifically convincing image. _Paralysis_. Really being dependent on someone else for everything. For the rest of his life, which would of course be however long Snow decided it should be.

He lies down, lies limp and unmoving. Katniss keeps her place, feet spaced wide apart, slightly hunched. Her arms are held out strangely in front of her, half rose. He regards her through narrowed eyes. Offering to help him up? He's too heavy for her. But she could drag him, maybe. That's how it will start, with Katniss dragging him back inside the fence because he can no longer walk, can't even crawl. And from there, the hell of needing the kids for _everything_. Or maybe Snow will send the henchmen back to live with him.

"Get out of here," he rasps. Talking pulls at his throat like fish-hooks being dragged up the length of it. He coughs. That's worse, but he can't help it. He just keeps coughing, and instead of coming up the fish-hooks dig in. He can taste blood. And now the coughs are interspersed with wheezing as his body- just blood and meat divorced from his mind- claws for air.

When it finally, finally stops, Katniss is not there anymore. He'd been looking up at her from maybe five feet away, and now that direction holds an unobstructed view of the Hanging Tree. He's alone. She has left him here. That one act of kindness consoles him immeasurably. Alright. It's going to be alright. S'okay.

His hand finds the haft of the knife and he pulls it towards him.

Snow will take the kids now. With the baby on the way, Katniss will have a temporary reprieve. But Snow will inevitably punish the kids for his death. It wasn't part of the plan for him to die outside the fence. Peeta might be taken to the Capitol right away. There might be modifications on both of them. The kids will suffer for this. A year, maybe less, and Katniss and Peeta will both have Cells, and johns, and _handlers_.

Haymitch has destroyed everything.

He lies limply on the dead ground; unable to cry, unable to apologize, forever beyond putting himself between the kids and Snow's artful system. It was all for nothing, then. Humiliated, subjugated, broken and tamed, he lies still. He thinks that's the worst part- that he'll die tamed. But at least it's the end of the whole mess.

A new sound breaks the stillness- a moan. It's a quick, high-pitched, unwilling sound, forced from the mouth of someone accustomed to burying all outward signs of pain. It's followed by a spate of hard, panting breaths.

Katniss hasn't left. She didn't even hear Haymitch tell her to leave. Leaving is out of the question.

She stands on wide-spread feet, swaying slightly and hunched over, her arms held out for balance. "Walk," she hisses. How far back to the fence? It's full daylight now, the sun's rays shining brightly on this little clearing. She can't sneak back in like this, not during the day. The Peacekeepers will catch her. They'll have to slip through the fence between patrols, but she can't imagine bending her back enough to get under the wire. She could let herself fall and drag herself through on her belly, but that's about it.

They'll catch her. She can't go back. But she can't stay here, either. Escape and they kill mom and Prim. Get caught sneaking back through the fence and- what?

Haymitch is still lying on the ground a few feet away. Dead? No, she remembers him speaking to her. Not dead, but not moving. She looks down at him, trying to think. Her hair is in her face, a dark curtain she must see the world through now. She can't raise her head or straighten up.

"Haymitch?" she hisses as loudly as she can. She takes a tiny step towards him and falls flat on her face. The pain is exquisite, and she cries out and then lies there panting.

She's lying in front of him, probably within arm's reach, and Haymitch is sure she wasn't there a second ago. Her eyes are shut and her features drawn in and compressed somehow. Another tiny cry escapes her parted lips. Tears trace down her cheeks. And some malicious god suddenly bundles him through a time warp and condemns him to relive that moment from months ago. Once again, his Girl on Fire is just another scared, hurt kid. She's trapped and surrounded and too wounded to make it very far even if they would let her get away. He's seen the end enough times to recognize it by now. There's nothing he can send her that will disperse the killers waiting around her tree. She's done. But he's all she has.

Haymitch pushes himself up, crying voicelessly. Blood trickles from his neck and drips from his mouth. The whole world is pain, and his only purpose is to protect the kids from this. Shaking and uncoordinated, he reaches for Katniss. His hand finds her hair and he pulls it savagely. She cries out in a cracked voice and her eyes fly open. He's dragging her up by the hair and she's hissing and striking at him. Her hands hit against his arms, his chest, his face. He imagines this is what it might be like to be pelted with small, sharp-edged rocks.

Holding on, he shakes her in sudden fury. Knives stab into his back, the noose cuts into his neck, he can't get a deep breath, and now there are these goddamn _rocks_. And he wants to hurt this hellcat. All-encompassing pain shades into a blend of pain and rage. The hellcat reflects his rage back at him in her hisses and snarls. If both of them weren't so gravely injured they would really kill each other this time.

Haymitch lets go of Katniss's hair. He's finally losing his mind. For a minute there, Katniss had been only a source of pain to be stopped in whatever way was quickest.

They're both sitting up now, at least. He'd wanted to make her get up. Before he'd wanted to kill her, the goal had been to make her get up.

"Son of a bitch," Katniss hisses at him, making it clear with her expression that this is meant as a name rather than an exclamation. She can talk, but it doesn't exactly feel _good_. This is a time for being concise.

He bares his teeth. _Feeling's mutual, honey_. Then he points back in the direction they came and raises his eyebrows. She nods, a grimly determined look coming over her face. This is the only expression Katniss owns that makes her really resemble her mother. Which brings him back to how really fucking badly his back hurts.

Somehow they both stand up, gripping each other arms and pushing against each other. Katniss leans heavily against Haymitch as though he's a wall or a tree for her to brace herself on. Knowing the girl can't support his weight, Haymitch finds himself unable to even handle hers. The fear rises in his mind again and tries to possess his senses. He thinks of wheelchairs; of people around him all the time, their hands on him; of being helpless.

Protect the kids. That's all that matters. That's all that matters. But… but, ah gods, please, not that.

He shifts back and forth a little, towards Katniss and away from her and back. Just a little. It hurts. He keeps coming back to that basic truth, lingering behind every other thought. But at least there are other thoughts now. And he knows that's entirely because Katniss is here. She doesn't know the effect she has on people. How right Peeta had been.

Shifting, he finds he can support the girl's weight in such short, broken intervals. Progress.

"Ready?" she hisses. "One…"

If he could, he would laugh. Hell is repetition.

"Two… three," she finishes on her own. And on three she takes a small step forward and he watches her feet and steps with her and then they're moving. She leans, he shifts, and they move forward with their arms slung around each other's shoulders like a couple of blitzed Capitolites coming home from a trendy club.

The walk back to the edge of the forest takes nearly five hours. Dusk is falling around them as they approach the tree line. They stop just short of the cleared strip and lean against a wide tree trunk. Neither says a word or even looks at the other. The walking had gotten a little easier, and then a little more. By the time the fence comes into view, they are pretty much supporting themselves.

Katniss had kept a hold on Haymitch's arm. When her grip tightened, he knew she was feeling unsteady. When she pulled him towards her he knew _he_ had started to stumble. In this way they had made it to the edge, often slowing until one or the other had recovered a little but never stopping.

They crawl back into 12 shortly after full darkness descends. Haymitch drags himself through first and fights back onto his feet, thinking disjointedly that if the Peacekeepers come he must distract them. No one comes. Katniss rejoins him, and they head for the Village.

"Almost there," Katniss offers hoarsely. Haymitch nods. He hasn't spoken since the clearing.

He isn't at all surprised when Katniss guides them towards his house instead of the one she shares with Peeta.


	21. Skewed Perceptions

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follows, Karinou and TLVS2DSTRY!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 21**

Peeta is quickly coming to feel that this is the worst day of his life. There are plenty of contestants for that title: the day he'd woken up to find one of his legs missing; the day Katniss told him that everything that happened between them in the arena was just an act; the day Snow invaded his house in the Village and told him that he and Katniss were to become prostitutes; the day he'd discovered how much it had cost Haymitch to save them from that fate. One by one, this day has surpassed each of those forerunners. Peering intensely out the front window, he pinches himself for the tenth time in as many minutes. He doesn't wake up this time, either.

Katniss is gone.

She'd been gone when he'd woken up that morning. No big deal, he'd told himself. She hates it when he fusses, so he isn't going to overreact. She'd probably gone hunting. And never mind that that _is_ a big deal. They'd both agreed that with things the way they are now it's far too dangerous for her to be sneaking into the forest. But she's stubborn, and sometimes (only sometimes) she has more steel than sense in her nature.

As the day dragged inexorably on to late morning, he'd reasoned that she had probably gone to the Hob. And that at least is sensible. She could hardly bring her catch to their house. They can't chance being caught with wild meat, and in any case they don't need it. Maybe she took it to her mother and Prim, or even to the Hawthornes.

This line of reasoning doesn't reassure him as much as it should. In fact, he's feeling a little sick. There's heaviness in his belly. He keeps taking deep, sighing breaths, as though his subconscious knows he's suffocating even though his senses tell him there's plenty of air.

Well, he'll just go into the Seam. He'll go to the Hob and ask around, and if she's not there he'll stop by Elsabet's house. He'll find her.

But he ends up detouring towards Haymitch's house as soon as he steps out the front door. Haymitch has been back from his latest sojourn in the Capitol for eleven days today, and he's not doing well. He won't leave his house or bathe or comb his hair, and Peeta is pretty sure that the only time he ingests anything other than liquor is when Peeta's there to cajole and pressure him into it. He's gotten to the point where he needs looking after. And as grim a task as that often ends up being, at least it's a distraction from this pointless worrying about Katniss.

And sometimes, if he's patient and if he finds the right words, that new dark-sick-decaying tone leaks out of Haymitch's voice and they can talk. When he's not looking up from the bottom of the well, Haymitch is still a good person to talk with.

So Peeta heads across his and Katniss's yard and then across the yard to Haymitch's eerily deserted-looking house. He knocks, on the off-hand chance that Haymitch is awake and sober enough to hear him and answer the door. But he's too keyed up to wait this time, so he lets himself into the unlocked house.

The apprehensiveness that he's been trying to deny flash-freezes into fear when he sees that half-full bottle sitting by itself on the dining room table, the chair pushed back and Haymitch nowhere in sight. Calling Haymitch's name, he makes a quick search of the house.

Katniss and Haymitch are gone.

It's a fight to keep himself from running all the way to the Hob. He must not draw attention to whatever is happening here. He skips Elsabet's house. Katniss would not have gone to visit her mother and Prim if she had Haymitch with her.

Shortly after getting back to the Village and unsuccessfully searching both his and Haymitch's houses a second time, denial morphs into anger. How could they just go off like this for hours without a word to him? They know he'll be worried. Those two together are the perfect storm of self-centeredness.

He takes up his station at the side window, from whence he can see the archway leading into the Village. And he thinks that he would give anything to see them come safely through that gate, laughing or sniping at each other or, hell, midway through a knock-down-drag-out brawl, just as long as they come back and they're okay.

Peeta sees them walking back under the archway, Katniss holding Haymitch's arm just as though he's escorting her to some fancy Capitol gala. And absurdly, his first thought is of their wedding just a few weeks ago. That horrible parody of a wedding with Snow officiating and those embarrassing, syrupy, patriotic vows and Haymitch standing off to Snow's left shaking from withdrawal and looking like he might really collapse right there in front of the gleeful audience. His and Katniss's wedding.

He watches them make their slow way to Haymitch's house, leaning in close to each other. Clearly they're alright, then. They haven't been taken into custody by the Peacekeepers. They aren't on a train heading for the Capitol or locked up in cells in the Justice Building. No, they're perfectly alright. Just taking a leisurely evening walk back to Haymitch's house, talking about who knows what. What could they be talking about?

Peeta shakes his head. And more to the point, where the hell have they been all day?

He watches them disappear into the house next door in astonished silence. Feeling ridiculous, he raises one hand and waves slowly at the two of them. Because Haymitch's doorstep is less than fifty yards from their own, and he's standing at the side window directly facing it for god's sake. If either one of them would so much as glance towards the house Katniss snuck out of before sunrise that morning, they'd see him standing here like some waving supernumerary.

Neither of them glances up. Peeta shakes his head again and gives a snort of astounded, just-starting-to-be-really-_pissed_ laughter. The perfect storm of self-centeredness.

Alright, then. Time to go crash the party.

Taking measured carefully controlled steps, Peeta walks to the door leading outside. _I must not overreact. I must remember who I'm dealing with_. He twists the knob hard and shoves the door away from him. _I have to be patient with them, because there has to be at least one adult in this group_. That's the wrong direction for his thoughts to be going. He just needs to go over there and calmly figure out what's going on and how best to deal with it. Descending to their level isn't going to help anyone.

Peeta enters Haymitch's house and slams the door shut behind him. "Katniss? Haymitch?" he calls, looking around. There's no immediate answer. He just watched them walk in here. He knows they're here. Are they _hiding_ from him?

"Oh for the love of-" Peeta mutters, and ventures down the hall toward the kitchen.

The kitchen is empty. That same half-full bottle sits by itself on the table. The chairs are shoved up against the table haphazardly, except for the single pushed out one. The room looks exactly as it did the last time he was here.

"Katniss! Haymitch!" he yells again, turning to go back down the hall. Then he lets out a yelp of terror and quick-steps backwards. His feet tangle in one of the islands of dirty clothes and he lands hard on his ass. Wide-eyed, he stares at the revenant lurking in the doorway to Haymitch's kitchen.

It's Katniss, hunched over and leaning against the doorframe. She's dressed in her father's old clothes, and her braid is coming undone. Her entire neck is purplish-blue, dead-looking and awful. She watches Peeta in silence, and they effect is otherworldly. For just a few seconds, Peeta in convinced in his gut that he's seeing a wraith and Katniss is dead.

Getting a hold of himself, he stands up and goes to her. "What happened to you? Come here." She shouldn't be on her feet, not looking like that. He pulls her arm around his shoulders to maneuver her over to one of the chairs but she turns in to him, turns it into an embrace and lays her head against his chest.

Tears prick at Peeta's eyes as he wraps his arms around her. "Katniss, I'm so glad you're here," he says in a rush, not knowing he meant to say that at all. "I was so worried. I looked for you all day. I thought- I thought something horrible had happened."

"Sorry," she whispers against his shirt. "I'm sorry. I'll never do that to you again. Oh, Peeta." She shudders.

"Alright. Alright, let's go sit down," he urges her. Someone's hurt her. Someone's had their hands around her neck and done who knows what else to her. The way she was leaning on the doorframe… and this shuddering…

It occurs to him what they might have done, what someone might have done, and he feels his throat constrict.

Haymitch must have found her and guided her home. But he'd been too late this time. Neither of them had been there to save her. And now his beautiful Katniss is shuddering and leaning against him and apologizing as though it's her fault.

He leads her to the pushed out chair and gets her to sit down with a single murmured word. It's no good; he wants to hold her, needs to hold her, and he can't do that with her sitting in this straight-backed dining room chair. Sharp frustration and helpless anger stabs at him. His chest actually hurts, seeing her like this.

He can't sit with her on the floor. This situation is viciously horrible enough already. She won't get that bad, he promises himself. I won't let her break apart like Haymitch has. I'll keep her with me, and she'll get whatever help and support she needs. And I'm _never_ letting her out of my sight again. I can save her. And saving Katniss is what it's all about. Saving her is the same as saving everything.

This is something he and Haymitch have both internalized, a place where their separate traumas and strengths and ways of understanding things will always hit against each other and weave together. In Katniss they've found something transcendent and eternal. To protect her is to protect the entire world.

Peeta pulls a second chair right up against Katniss's to form a makeshift bench and sits down and immediately enfolds her in his arms again. Her shaking has ceased, and this time she doesn't lay her head against his chest. That's a position that speaks of a need to feel safe, the defeated move of someone who's scared and in pain and driven to wordlessly beg someone else to protect them. It's a surrender of one's normal position in relation to others, at least for a while.

Katniss hugs him back with her chin on his shoulder, and he knows it's going to be okay. She's strong.

Peeta catches the rest of that thought and crushes it, feeling a flicker of guilty shame that it arose in the first place. He's still upset from this eons-long day of waiting and worrying, and the impact of realizing what happened. Haymitch isn't weak, wasn't before this and isn't now. He's just been hurt a lot worse. It's eating him up, but he's still protecting them.

Finding Katniss in this state must have stirred up the dark places in his psyche. He'd brought her back here and then retreated to one of the dark, rarely-used rooms of his perpetually wrecked house. Peeta figures he should go check on him, thank him for bringing Katniss home and tell him she's going to be okay. But first things must be kept first.

"You're going to be fine," he tells Katniss. "You're safe, now."

He feels her shake her head impatiently, and then she draws away from him.

"Of course I'll be fine," she snaps. It had been a really shitty thing to do to Peeta; she'd realized that as soon as she'd seen him. Well, she'd really known that from the very moment her shock became an idea and her idea morphed into stony intention. Slipping out of their bed this morning with all the graceful silence of a cat, she'd avoided looking at him as he slept on undisturbed. She couldn't stay for him, so she'd left without a backwards glance.

Seeing Peeta again after everything, she'd been nearly bowled over by the immensity of what she'd put him through. It rolled off him in waves. She'd never before felt such sorrow and despair coming from him. She still feels guilty about it, and she knows apologies aren't enough.

But she'd already been going against her nature to let him hug her a second time with that protective, gentle, let-me-fix-it in his every movement. She hasn't had a great day either, and now she feels her temper fraying at his words.

He looks back at her and then his face breaks into a wide smile. "Yeah, of course you will," he agrees. The smile fades from his face as quickly as it appeared. "But I'm still going to kill them for this."

Katniss gives him an uncomprehending look. Kill who? Wait, he isn't _that_ over-protective, is he? She considers this question for all of five seconds. He's Peeta, so of course he is. She just never imagined she'd finish this long, strange day by protecting Haymitch from her vengeful husband/guard dog. But it seems she'll have to. She's never seen Peeta throw a punch and doubts he'd resort to knives, but inexperience isn't going to make any difference with Haymitch in his current condition.

"It's not Haymitch's fault," she tells Peeta. "It was my idea." That last is hard to admit, but she's ready to give him as many apologies and promises as he needs. It was her idea, and she'd never claimed to be a good person. Peeta is the only good guy in their little group.

Her idea? Peeta tries to put the disparate pieces together with a mind that feels increasingly sludgy. Katniss has been (attacked assaulted raped) hurt, it has something to do with Haymitch (who is increasingly violent and unstable), and it was _her idea_. Nightmare? his mind offers hopefully. Vivid nightmare?

Her idea to _go out_, he settles on. Of course that's what (all) she means. It was her idea to sneak out by herself and go to the Hob or wherever she got hurt, and it's not Haymitch's fault that he found her too late to get between her and the danger this time. Katniss is just engaging in her typical behavior of blaming herself for things that are completely out of her control. Like the inherent tendency of people to rend and destroy anything bright and beautiful, for instance.

"Let's go find him," Peeta says. And what a stupid, misguided, paranoid idea that was, anyway. Such a thought should never have occurred to him, would never have occurred to him if he wasn't still so shaken. Haymitch must never know or even guess at what Peeta's first thought was. Peeta just needs to see him, right now. One quick glance is all he needs to finish burying the idea six feet under the cold ground, before it can rise up in his eyes and do damage.

"Peeta, wait," Katniss says. There's worry in her eyes. She's actually worried for Haymitch. The madness is gaining ground.

Katniss watches Peeta's expression and sees cold fury written in every line. Worse, she sees a totally new gleam of menace in the set of his jaw and the tightening of his features. The threat's not for her, but she feels it very clearly all the same.

"Let's just go home, okay? Peeta, he's hurt and he's not himself right now. He's sorry, too, but you _know_ he can't say so. He'd have an embolism or something," she says, trying to inject some lightness into the situation. In this she is totally ineffective. "Just think it over and calm down before you barge in there and confront him, alright?"

"I'm going to kill him," Peeta says very distinctly. Then he turns and walks away down the hall, leaving Katniss staring after him. She shakes herself out of her state of shock and takes the first running stride to catch up with him.

Her back predictably chooses that moment to remind her that she spent the morning doing her best to break it. Katniss cries out in startled pain and falls to her knees. She sinks down into a sitting position and leans sideways against the wall. Must remember to lean, she tells herself distantly. Lean of trees, on Haymitch, on the wall, on Peeta. Got to lean on something. No running.

Peeta turns around at her cry, alarmed. "Katniss, are you-" he starts to say. Then his mouth snaps shut, his eyes narrow into dangerous slits, and he turns and continues down the hall.

"I'm fine," Katniss whisper-hisses to the empty hall, finding a way to make even this sorry excuse for a voice sarcastic. "Thanks for checking." Carefully she regains her feet and follows him, remembering to lean on the wall this time. One corner of her mind insists on trying to recall the canes she's seen for sale in the Hob in as much detail as possible. Needing a cane is one of the few legal ways to carry a 'weapon' in 12. Haymitch will appreciate that insight. She should share it with him, if he survives the wrath of Peeta.

Peeta enters the den at a ground-devouring trot. Haymitch is in the very first place his eyes go to: the brown armchair by the fireplace. He's leaning over towards the fireplace with his head bowed, twisted around so his back is to the door. He doesn't move when Peeta comes into the room.

Peeta steps around in front of his and drives his fist into the bowed head, aiming for the jaw. He's startled when the punch knocks Haymitch completely out of his chair and leaves him sprawling on the floor in an ungainly heap. And with Haymitch is this new position Peeta can see his neck clearly. He can see the extensive bruising and swelling that's a perfect match for Katniss's. There's more than that to be seen here, though. There's a great quantity of caked, dried blood. And there's the dark gleam of blood that still wet and fresh and rising all over and along the thick coil of rope that's become imbedded in Haymitch's neck.

Haymitch clumsily pushes himself up, lips locked against the stream of invectives trying to push out of his swollen throat and carry him back to those halcyon moments of coughing and spitting up blood and wheezing. The kid can throw a punch. He aim is crappy, but he can punch. Clearly Peeta isn't getting on board with Haymitch's last minute decision to jump with Katniss instead of knocking her out and carrying her back here over his shoulder.

Not that siding with Katniss ended up counting for shit. She'd said she was going to take the boy out of here. He'd seen the guilt catching up with her, and at least that probably means she won't try it again. But, _hell_, she'd promised to take Peeta home and keep him out of here, at least until the morning.

Sitting on the floor next to his favorite chair, Haymitch contemplates getting beaten by Peeta as some sort of punishment for allowing Katniss to try to hang herself. Not even 'beaten up', because that would involve being up on his feet and fighting back. Just getting _beaten_. Maybe Peeta will take off his damn belt and use that.

Movement in the doorway catches his eye, and just look at this. Speak of the devil, as they say. It's Katniss herself, standing in the doorway watching the spectacle, leaning against the doorframe like someone three times her age but still very much on _her_ feet.

Haymitch decides he hates them both. His gray eyes return to Peeta as the boy moves in and gets ready to start. He wonders if this experience will be any easier to drink away than what happens in the Capitol.

Peeta drops to the floor in front of Haymitch, partly to get on his eye level, mostly to get a good look at the- noose. It can't be anything but a noose. They hung themselves. He can't believe it, doesn't want to believe it. He leans forward, and Haymitch leans back. His maddened, hate-filled eyes spit fire at Peeta. Peeta merely scoots closer to him. At this particular moment a silent threat that Haymitch is utterly incapable of backing up doesn't even register on his priority list.

"Hold still," he says. His hand reaches out and Haymitch catches his intention a second before Peeta's fingers brush against the rope.

Haymitch scoots away, furious at not being able to spring to his feet. He's going to need to hold onto something if he wants to get up. A darkly humorous realization strikes him: he might as well just sit still until Peeta finishes prodding at the raw wound in his neck, and then Peeta will help him stand up as a reward for behaving. That's how his life works now, obedience and rewards. The boy was quick to see that.

But what are the options? Haymitch decides he can either wait for Peeta to help him up or he can crawl over to the wall and use that. Setting his jaw and fixing his hot, angry eyes on the floor, he waits.

Peeta sits back on his heels and takes a moment to catch at his racing thoughts. "You're unbelievable," he says to the man in front of him in what he feels is an admirably calm tone. The physical injuries can be dealt with, on both of them. Handle those first, then. "I'll be right back. Don't move," he orders. He doesn't care if the tone works this time or not. It's obvious from Haymitch's whole bearing that he can't move anyway.

Peeta pauses in front of Katniss. "You, too. You're just unbelievable. I don't even know how else to put it."

A mulish looks flits across her features and then vanishes. "I know. I'm sorry," she says humbly. There's a derisive snort from behind Peeta where Haymitch still sits on the floor, followed by a brief spate of coughing.

Peeta waits this out, watching Haymitch with a sardonic tilt to his head. When it tapers off, he says, "Yeah, intelligent input there, Haymitch." He takes Katniss's arm. "Come on. Lean on me. Tell me if you need to go slower." They start back down the hall.

"Where are we going?" Katniss asks.

"Kitchen," Peeta answers briefly. He's going to leave it at that, show her he's still angry by shutting her out. But the anger at both of them is still being watered down quite a bit by relief. And it feels good to have someone to talk to right now. "We're going to get a knife and cut that rope off his neck before it finishes the job you two started."

"He's not going to let you," Katniss says. And really that should go without saying. Haymitch wants them to leave. She can see that; why can't Peeta? Isn't he supposed to be the expert in wrangling violent, neurotic drunks?

"Well, tough," Peeta says. He unhooks her arm from around his shoulders. "Stay here while I grab a knife."

Holding on to the doorframe, Katniss wonders how Peeta thinks he's going to do this. Her curiosity quickly fades, though. Mostly she just wants to go home and go to bed.

For the first time since regaining consciousness, her thoughts touch on her 'delicate condition.' That's a phrase she's heard in the Capitol, of course, where they have a euphemism for everything. Not that she's ever had that phrase applied to her in the dozen or so interviews she's endured since the wedding. She's Pregnant, as gleeful TV personalities from Caesar Flickerman on down never tire of trumpeting. Districters get pregnant (not to mention impregnated); Capitolites sometimes find themselves in a 'delicate condition.' It's one more thing that differentiates them.

Is she, though? Did it survive her leap from the tree? How long was she unconscious? Did it get enough oxygen?

Hesitantly she lays a hand on that hated curve. Wouldn't her belly hurt if she'd lost it? She just doesn't know. Her mother had sat her down a few days before her wedding and tried to tell her about being pregnant, but Katniss had been completely unprepared to listen to it.

"Katniss? Are you doing alright?" Peeta asks, appearing at her side again. He has a long, thin knife tucked into his belt.

"I'm fine," she says, dropping her hand and conjuring up a reassuring smile for him.

He returns a long, considering look. "Does your belly hurt?"

"No," she tells him truthfully. Not that either of them know if that means anything.

Peeta sighs and takes her arm again. "Alright. Slow and easy, now."

He takes her into the den this time and deposits her in the chair on the other side of the fireplace.

While they were gone, Haymitch has gotten himself back up into his usual chair. Peeta is grateful for this. He couldn't have done much with Haymitch while the man was sitting on the floor and pretty clearly unable to get up without help. Being in that position would have had approximately the same effect on his tractability as a bur under the halter of a goat.

Haymitch tenses at his approach and leans away, a response Peeta's almost gotten used to. His hands clench on the arms of the chair. His eyes are locked on Peeta, feral and glinting.

"Nice gloves," Peeta says off-handedly, stopping just out of striking distance.

It gets the reaction he was hoping for. Wariness and readiness to attack flicker into surprise. Haymitch relaxes- slightly- and glances over at Katniss, raising his eyebrows.

Katniss rolls her eyes, agreeing with Haymitch on the absolute thundering inanity of the non-sequitur. "Peeta's just not used to seeing you wear anything that isn't filthy," she explains. "It's a bit like seeing silk on a pig."

Haymitch smiles sarcastically at her and inclines his head in a very small nod. Then he turns his attention back to Peeta.

Peeta takes the knife out of his belt, showing it to Haymitch and still keeping his distance. "I'm going to cut that rope off your neck, okay?"

Haymitch holds out a hand, gesturing irritably.

"Ask for it properly and I might give it to you," Peeta finds himself saying. This is probably not the wisest thing he could say at the moment, to judge by the scowl he gets in response. Then Haymitch bows his head again, keeping watch on Peeta from the tops of his eyes. Peeta looks back at him and thinks: dog-gonna-bite. Just like that, pushed together and thought in hurried warning. It describes this look and posture perfectly.

"He can't talk," Katniss puts in, watching them alertly from the other side of the fireplace. "The rope, you know." She falters, and then continues in a softer voice, "Maybe it crushed something…"

Peeta looks back and forth between them. "You really can't talk?" he asks Haymitch. "I thought you were just sulking." The silence had been getting creepy, especially combined with his disturbed body language. It had started to feel like he was talking to some sort of doppelganger, outwardly similar to Haymitch but with the mind of something smaller and twisted and insane.

"Then I guess I won't be giving you this knife," Peeta continues after a moment. He comes forward, just wanting to get this over with now. Stopping at the side of the chair, he reaches for the rope.

Haymitch jerks away from the light touch that falls on the side of his neck. He's not ready for it. He can't shake things into their rightful positions. Everything is shifting around him, and every sensation- hell, every thought- adds to it. The kid needs to get out of here, now.

A voice commands him to hold still and the hand is on his neck again, rubbing and caressing. Does he actually think Haymitch _likes_ that? Does this guy fuck dogs in his spare time or something? Haymitch presses back into the chair. His revulsion at what is happening actually makes the caresses seem to hurt.

The rope is stuck. Peeta had envisioned this would take less than thirty seconds: pull the noose away from Haymitch's neck just enough to cut it, and it would fall away. Quick, easy, and more or less painless. It doesn't matter very much that Haymitch's body language is announcing all the things he can't say as clearly as a flashing danger signal. He can keep it together for thirty seconds and then the most important part will be over.

But the rope won't pull free at all, and there seems no way to get a grip on it without actually digging his fingers into the wound. He tries to roll it down past the gash. That just pushes the wound open more.

"What a mess," Peeta says quietly, in the hope that his voice will keep Haymitch anchored. "You idiot. You'll be lucky if it doesn't get infected. It's no wonder you can't talk. Bet you can't breathe that well, either." His tone stays quiet and even, belying the harshness of his words.

Haymitch has stopped trying to press himself through the back of the chair, but his eyes have gone distant and unfocused. His hands have relaxed themselves on the chair arms.

"I think we're going to have to take him to your mother," Peeta says. "It's worked into his neck a lot more deeply than I'd thought. I just don't see how I can get it lose without doing more damage."

"I'm staying here," Katniss says immediately. No way can she let her mother see her like this- to say nothing of Prim. They can't know about this, ever.

"You aren't," Peeta refutes, turning towards her but keeping part of his attention fixed on Haymitch. "You tried to _kill_ yourself today. I'm not letting you out of my sight. Haymitch, _stop_ that."

The john has finally stopped stroking his neck, no doubt getting ready to move on to the main event. Haymitch brings a hand up to rub at the place where those possessive fingers had been. _Hold still_. There's not an inch of his skin that is his own anymore. Their hands touch him everywhere, their weight presses against his back and his chest and his thighs, their mouths cover his as they force him to taste their sour spit and feel their wet breath on him. And all of that is just a prelude.

His neck is wet and sticky. For just a second his eyes close tightly. Oops, I guess that _was_ the main event. It's not only their hands that have been all over every bit of what used to be his body. A mocking smirk curves his lips. Nice control there, jackass.

He begins to scrub at yet another permanently filthy bit of himself, pulling the cuff of his shirt partway over his hand and rubbing hard. It's not easy to wipe off, but he isn't surprised by that anymore. There's a hell of a lot of it this time. Some damn twenty-year-old, a spoiled rich-kid Capitolite. Probably his first time having one of the Victor-Slaves and too damn hair-trigger to go off in one of the usual places. Hot with shame and disgust and self-loathing, Haymitch begins to scratch at the disgusting stuff. Better under his fingernails than on his neck.

"Stop that."

His hands are caught and pulled away from his neck and held. It interrupts the- waking nightmare? Hallucination? Delusion, he decides, and on the heels of that: I'm having delusions. Well, shit. How is he supposed to even know what's real, with his screwed-up mind throwing little delights like _that_ at him? An obscure word flashes across his consciousness, something gleaned from a long-dead uncle on his father's side: agley. As in, "Pay him no mind, lad; he's a little bit agley."

Peeta's in front of him, leaning in close, Peeta and his profound, willful cluelessness about boundaries. Haymitch focuses on him, suppressing his resentment because it would be nice to go on having this weird, off-kilter, something-like-friendship for a while longer. At the very least it's a distraction, and that's something he can appreciate the value of.

Unsurprisingly, Peeta is in full-on caretaker mode now. And why not? Both the kids will have gotten an up-close view of his unpleasant mind-trip just now. And Haymitch has no doubts at all about their ability to figure out exactly what he was imagining. Even Katniss knows, now, and she made downright heroic efforts to stay oblivious to all this.

"Look at me," Peeta commands. Haymitch knows what always follows that command. But if (Peeta) complains, Katniss or Peeta will be making it up to (Peeta). Confused, he meets Peeta's cerulean eyes and finds solid ground again. He drops his eyes at once and twists his hands free of the restraining grip. Peeta immediately catches his wrists, tightening his hold. Haymitch wills himself to keep still, knowing he won't be able to for very long.

"You need to leave it alone. I know it hurts. We're going to get it off of you."

"If he can get it loose, let him," Katniss demands. Peeta shouldn't be doing that. She can sense Haymitch's rising agitation like electricity in the air. It's like a dimmed version of what she would feel if Peeta ever pinned her wrists like that. She suspects the dimmed aspect of it won't last long. Self-control is not one of Haymitch's strengths. "You've got the wolf by the ears, Peeta. Now let go and back away before he _bites_ you."

"He wasn't pulling at the noose, he was scratching at it," Peeta says, his voice loud with frustration. "Which is a _really stupid thing to do_." He says the words slowly and clearly, because it's the only way he has to emphasize them right now. The way he's feeling, it would be nice to punctuate the message with a few brisk shakes. But there's something to what Katniss said.

"Okay, everyone," Peeta continues. "We're going to the Seam. _All_ of us are going to the Seam," he reiterates over Katniss's repeated attempt to demur. Cautiously, he loosens his hold on Haymitch's wrists and then lets go. Haymitch seems ready to concede that things are bad enough and all efforts to further complicate matters may therefore be postponed indefinitely. At least he keeps his hands where they are. Peeta gives him a smile in passing acknowledgement of his first sensible decision of the day. He's still doing better than Katniss, in the sense the negative twenty is better than negative twenty-one.

"I'm going to help you stand up. Ready?"

Haymitch allows Peeta to lever him up onto his feet and then pushes him away. He's decided to go along with this, now. He wants the rope off him. If that means going to Elsabet, well, fine. Let's get it over with. He wants to see if he can still talk. Taking a normal breath again would be nice, too. He'll think about the rest of it after that.

"Can you walk?" Peeta asks, looking at him dubiously. Like the boy expects an answer. Haymitch levels a forbidding stare at him.

"We walked all the way back here, Peeta," Katniss answers for him, rolling her eyes.

"Right," Peeta says. He comes over and offers her his hand, helping her up. "Take my arm. Lean on me."

Katniss does so, and the three of them head out.


	22. Healers in the Seam

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow/review, TheOnlyPotato! And thanks for the suggestion. That could go in so many directions! I'm looking forward to exploring it.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 22**

Their progress is slow and painstaking. Haymitch predictably refuses to take Peeta's other arm, following behind the pair of them and looking increasingly combative. If he could talk they'd no doubt be treated to a very colorful litany. Haymitch knows swear words that are unique to each District, the expressive substitutes they use in the Capitol, and a few Peeta thinks he probably made up while drunk. The air around them is becoming thick with unspoken curses.

Peeta glances back every minute or so to make sure he's keeping up. This Haymitch doesn't seem to see, as his head is bowed and he's busy watching his feet. Nonetheless, every time Peeta looks back the atmosphere gets momentarily heavier and harder to breathe in.

If Haymitch stops, Peeta will have to force the man to put an arm around his shoulders. He doesn't want to do that. Having that degree of derangement right up against him would be suffocating. Peeta decides the first thing he's going to do after Elsabet takes care of the rope is make Haymitch say something. This silent incarnation is starting to seriously creep him out.

"So," he says to Katniss, "tell me what brought this on." Mentally he girds himself not to get mad again no matter what she says.

"I'm sorry," Katniss says again, ignoring the scorn-laden chuff from a few feet behind them. "It was stupid."

"Why would you do something like that?" he asks her. He'd really tried to be there for her since she'd moved in with him. He'd brought her food and made tea for her and spent most of each day in her presence just waiting for her to talk to him. He _had_ been there, in every way he could be. What else could she have wanted from him?

It has to be something to do with him. Maybe food and tea weren't the right offerings. Maybe she'd wanted flowers. There aren't any florists in 12, not as such, but the people who own the confectionary have a small selection of bouquets for sale. He knows he's seen daffodils in there in the springtime, anyway. And if they don't have anything in midwinter he could have called Venia and arranged to have some sent from the Capitol. He could have gotten her flowers.

Or maybe that's making it harder than it is. Chocolates- don't all women like chocolates? That would have been easy to get. How could he have been married to Katniss Everdeen for almost five weeks and never once brought her chocolates? He'd thought he was doing well by her! He'd actually thought that. His mother is right. He's just a thoughtless, immature, selfish little boy after all.

He resolves yet again to do better, though he can't help the weary hopelessness that tinges this familiar resolution. How can I take care of her if she won't tell me what she wants?

Well it should be obvious what she wants, the inner mother replies in tones of perfect exasperation. Poor girl, I doubt its occurred to her that she has to _ask_ you to be a considerate husband.

Perhaps he should take Katniss to visit his mother. If he left them alone together for a little while his mother would certainly impress upon Katniss just how self-obsessed and thoughtless her youngest son is and tell her that she must be very firm and definite about what she wants from him. (Not that I'm speaking ill of the dear boy, you mustn't think that! He _means_ well.)

"I don't want to talk about it," Katniss says, trudging along beside him and holding onto his arm mostly to humor him. Somehow walking makes her steadier than just standing still. This is obviously true of Haymitch, too. Her compatriot in today's escapades seems much stronger out here, walking down the moonlit street. She wonders if there's something in that. Neither of them likes to stand still.

Anyway, now just doesn't strike her as a fortuitous time to discuss her ambivalence about the marriage; her loathing at the idea of being bred; her gnawing trepidation and surety that she'll be useless as a mother; or her recent revelations about certain facts of life for Victors, and what Haymitch has agreed to in order for her to 'only' be forced to marry and have a baby at sixteen.

Peeta sighs. "I'm going to do better," he tells her in a pleading voice. "I'm really trying." His voice breaks, and he takes a moment to get it back under control. When he speaks again it's in an affectedly deep and firm tone. "I swear I'm going to be a better husband to you."

"It's not you!" Katniss says earnestly, surprised and dismayed by these unsolicited promises. "Peeta, you've been really, really great. It's just…" She shrugs and waves a hand vaguely in the air.

"What?" he asks. They'll be at Elsabet's soon, and the chance to get a genuine answer from her will vanish. She'll never talk about anything bad enough to make her hang herself, once they have Elsabet and Prim listening in. And he needs the answer now if he is to have it at all. He needs it before she can build walls around it and pretend it was never there.

Maybe she doesn't want to tell him in front of Haymitch. But he can't exactly tell Haymitch to wait here while he and Katniss duck behind the nearest house and have a heart to heart. He has no intention of letting Haymitch out of his sight, at least for the next couple of days. And that goes for Katniss, too. He's not sure how he's going to manage that, but he'll just have to think of something. They obviously need watching.

If he'd paid more attention before, this never would have happened. They'd nearly died. That concept is still too enormous for him to really wrap his mind around. It's paradigm-altering, and he keeps turning away from it like he would turn from a copperhead that appears in one path after another through a malign spell. He can acknowledge it- _Katniss and Haymitch almost died today_\- but he can't understand it yet.

At some point, after Elsabet gets that rope off him, Peeta will have to ask Haymitch the same question. Only, he can well imagine what Haymitch's reason might have been. It's obvious, isn't it? And there's nothing Peeta can do to fix it for him. He'll have to appeal to Haymitch's compulsion to protect Katniss. It's the only thing that might bring him back from the edge.

Reluctantly, Peeta accepts that what the two of them did was Katniss's idea right from the start. Haymitch wouldn't have done this by himself. But he'd gone along with it, and he hadn't done anything to stop Katniss. Left to his own devices, he'll keep protecting them from everyone else as long as he can. But he won't protect Katniss from herself; au contraire, his dysfunction probably feeds hers. So he really isn't a safe person for Katniss to be around anymore.

And it follows that Katniss isn't a safe person for Haymitch to be around, either.

Peeta wonders if he would have joined them, had he been invited. And there's that, too, on top of everything else: they would have left him here alone. They would have left him to deal with their deaths, the retaliatory killings of Elsabet and Prim and who knows who else, and what Snow would have done to him. He, Peeta, would have become to only surviving Victor of District 12. And just look what that position did for Haymitch, even before he and Katniss came along.

Katniss considers the list of reasons she could give him, fully aware of how each one will be misinterpreted. She can't tell Peeta she did it because Snow forced her to marry him and will force them to stay married for the rest of their lives. That sounds horrible, even in her head. And none of this is Peeta's fault.

It's not inconceivable that she might even have chosen to marry him one day. She can sort of imagine that, although the image of Gale keeps superimposing itself over the image of Peeta. But she thinks- she's pretty sure- that Peeta is a good deal kinder than Gale, and there's no doubt at all that he loves her. Whatever. It's a moot point, isn't it? The decision's been taken out of her hands. And that is a good reason for what she did, in her opinion. But it's not one he'll let himself understand.

Nor can she tell him she did it because she's not ready to be a mother. That would go over only slightly better. If she said that, he wouldn't hear that he'd driven her to the point of running away into the woods and hanging herself. But then they'd have to talk about her being pregnant, and she doesn't want to. She's been able to shut down any putative conversation about her pregnancy for five weeks now. If she has her way (and he'd just better roll with her on this) there will be no talk of it at all until she actually has the baby.

Which leaves her with only the most recent addition to her list of reasons. In a sense, this last is the most honest answer to Peeta's question.

Katniss has always been the protector, the strong one, the resourceful one. When her father died she was left with a mother incapacitated by severe depression and a frail, helpless little sister. And that had been her life for years. She had cared for and comforted Prim, figured out how to get food for the three of them, and gone without food herself a lot of the time because there wasn't enough and she always made sure the others ate first. She'd thought Prim would starve in that first horrible year without their father. For a while her predominant nightmare had been, not her father burning to death in his mine-shaft-turned-mass-grave, but waking up in bed holding a tiny skeleton wearing Prim's nightgown.

What was left of her family had survived only because of her. And it had been the same thing again in the Arena. Haymitch had helped her save Peeta, but ultimately she had been the one running the risks for him. And she had come up with their checkmate, the only move that could let both of them escape the Games with their lives.

Her entire self-image and perspective on her place in the world had been uprooted by the realization that she is the one being protected at someone else's expense, now. She's become the frail, helpless one. And another person's life is being destroyed in order to spare her. Every day she goes on living means more damage to that person. But she's not an innocent little girl like Prim was; the situation isn't going to be over in a few more days like she'd known it would be in the Games. This is what the rest of their lives are going to be like.

She doesn't know if it would have been enough by itself or if it was just one thing too much, and it doesn't matter. It had been her catalyst.

But of course she can't say a word about any of that with Haymitch following a few feet behind them. Not least because she can't bring herself to remind him that this is inescapable now. The two of them had so nearly made it out of all this, but it will be the closest they ever come. Their chains are bolted into the very bedrock here. She can't abandon Peeta, Prim, her mother, Gale…

"Everything just caught up with me, I guess," she says lamely.

"You mean…" Peeta trails off, hoping she will provide something more specific. She says nothing, so he continues: "You mean the baby?" She claims it's not being married to him, so it must be the baby. Peeta finds that it really doesn't feel any better to think that she tried to kill herself because she didn't want to have a baby with him.

"Peeta," Katniss says warningly, her rote response to any mention of their unborn child.

"Sorry," Peeta replies immediately and unthinkingly. Just as well. He has his answer, and at the moment he can't think of anything more depressing than talking about it.

It's a relief to finally step into Elsabet's house. House is probably the wrong word, Peeta thinks, looking around curiously. He's never been in one of the Seam dwellings before. Elsabet and Prim visit often, but they always come to the Village.

So, this is where Katniss grew up.

His first impression is _dingy_, but he decides that's just because it's not as well-lighted as the dwellings in the Town or the Village. Not nearly as warm, either. The room they step into seems to be a combination living room/kitchen/dining room. There's a small square table with two wicker-seated chairs pushed neatly up to it, a counter and sink topped by a row of cabinets, a faded floral sofa with an old blanket folded on one end, a fireplace with a glowing bed of coals and a black iron arm mounted over it to hold a pot, and the government-issue projector mounted on the wall facing the sofa. An oil lamp sits on the table, its flame turned down low.

Peeta takes Katniss over to the sofa. Haymitch sits down in one of the chairs and leans forward, folding his arms on the table and laying his head on them.

Elsabet emerges from the bedroom with Prim following at her heels, ready to deal with whatever calamity has found its way here tonight. She casts a practiced and assessing eye over the arrivals while Prim waits eagerly for her first instruction.

"Really, Katniss," Elsabet says admonishingly, taking in the bruises that darken her older daughter's neck. Beside her, Prim's eyes widen and she echoes her sister's name in the exact opposite tone. Then she dashes over and jumps onto the sofa next to her. Prim immediately pushes Katniss's hair out of the way to examine her neck.

"Can you turn your head?" Her question is that of the promising apprentice healer she is, but she sounds scared.

"I'm fine, Little Duck," Katniss says, obediently turning her head from side to side before smiling at her little sister. The smile is forced. Prim doesn't need to see her like this. She might look just like a younger version of their mother, but she has none of Elsabet's toughness. And Katniss can't be there to comfort her anymore when she wakes up shrieking and crying.

Elsabet joins them, bending over Katniss. "Tilt your chin up. Good; now down."

Katniss obeys. It hurts enough to draw an involuntary hiss from her.

"Full range of motion, that's good," Elsabet notes, narrating her actions out of habit. "Now we check to see if the skin's broken anywhere." Her cool, efficient hands grasp Katniss's jaw and turn her head this way and that. "Minor abrasions." She steps back, satisfied. "You'll be fine. Do you have any other injuries?"

"No," Katniss says, staring up at her. "Thanks a lot for that, mom. It really helped."

Elsabet shakes her head. "What more do you want from me, Katniss? I treat injuries. That's all I know how to do."

"Forget it," Katniss mutters.

"Tell me what would help," Elsabet says, almost pleading.

"I'm fine," Katniss insists, embarrassed. She's tired, that's all it is. "Haymitch is the one you should be hovering over."

Elsabet turns away from Katniss with a flare of guilty relief. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's got a rope embedded in his neck," Peeta tells her. "Let me wake him up for you, okay?"

Haymitch waves a hand in the boy's general direction to fend off the unnecessary attempt to wake him. Only someone who's never spent several hours choking on a thick, abrasive piece of rope would think he could fall asleep like this. On top of that, it's been far too many hours since his last drink. He smiles against the fabric of his sleeve. Two more things to hope the kid stays naïve about.

"Come on, then. Lift your head," Peeta coaxes.

Elsabet surveys the bloody mess and makes a brief, annoyed _tsk_ sound. "I have questions."

"He can't talk," Peeta interjects.

"Of course not. You'll have to answer them. Sit down." She points to the other chair with a sharp jab of her hand. Peeta sits down quickly, almost wincing at the too-familiar snap in that tone. "Don't either of you move," Elsabet warns, her eyes sliding from Haymitch to Peeta and back again.

She disappears into the bedroom while Peeta looks apprehensively after her. Haymitch tilts his head slightly in the direction she went and then makes an exaggerated shivering motion, a snarky smile curving his lips.

"Go on and make fun," Peeta whispers, smiling back. "Just remember she's going to be standing over you with a knife while she's asking me her questions."

Haymitch has time to mouth, _you're in trouble_, before Elsabet returns with a bundle of supplies wrapped in a towel and a mug of liquor which she sets down on the table.

"Behave," Peeta mutters with a forbidding glance at the mug. Haymitch rolls his eyes, refusing to acknowledge that his immediate impulse had in fact been to grab the mug. Not least because he can guess what Elsabet intends to do with the stuff.

Prim drifts over to stand beside her mother, waiting.

"Take Katniss into the bedroom and try to find out if she's still pregnant," Elsabet says. "You know the questions?"

"Yes," Prim says, relinquishing her usual position and biting back the protest that rises to her lips. Someone has to stay with Katniss, and there are questions she couldn't ask in front of two men. Still, she can't help feeling disappointed as she turns away. She's never seen an injury like this before. As unsettling as she finds Haymitch, she wishes she could stay and do something to help or at least watch what her mother does.

Although most of her focus is on Haymitch and what she intends to do, Elsabet notices Prim slump as she turns away. "Prim," she says, summoning her back. She taps the rope just to the right of Haymitch's spine, untroubled by the blood that wets her finger. "I'll cut right here, as far from the major veins and arteries as possible but not right over the bone. Then I'll clean and disinfect the wound and stitch it closed. You know about those things already. We'll keep him here overnight to make sure he doesn't get feverish and let him go in the morning. It's ugly, but not nearly as interesting as it looks."

Elsabet watches her daughters disappear into the bedroom and close the door. She drops a pair of sewing scissors into the mug before she speaks.

"First question: why do Haymitch and Katniss both have similar injuries?"

"They hung themselves. I'm sorry. I-"

"Together?" she interrupts.

"Yes."

"Why would they do that?"

Peeta tries to catch Haymitch's eyes again, but Haymitch is studying the surface of the table. His hands are clasped together, compulsively squeezing and relaxing. Peeta wonders if Elsabet's questions are upsetting him or if this is Haymitch trying to prepare himself for the moment those alcohol-soaked scissors touch his neck.

"I don't know," Peeta answers, feeling useless. He didn't see it coming; he didn't do anything to prevent it; and most of all he doesn't know why.

"I see," Elsabet says. She sighs, apparently agreeing that she has a completely useless dolt for a son-in-law. She turns to Haymitch. "Let's get him over to the sofa. He'll need to lie down."

Peeta comes around the table and Elsabet watches Haymitch lean away from the young man's approach. It's a weird, uncanny movement that engenders a feeling of dread in her stomach even before she makes the connection. When it clicks, she looks sharply at Peeta and sees that he's all too aware of the effect he now has on Haymitch. Peeta's feckless blue eyes narrow for a second before his features settle back into a bland, reassuring expression.

"Let's get you up," he says, and for the first time Elsabet thinks she hears a touch of coldness in that voice.

Whatever that strange tic had signified, there's no sign of fear in Haymitch's bearing now. Voiceless, he gives Peeta a grimace that conveys nothing but anger and frustration.

"Come on, now," Peeta says.

"I'll do it," Elsabet says, pushing Peeta aside none too gently. "Can he walk?"

"Yeah, he just needs help getting up. Look, I'm not sure-"

"I've been doing this since before you were born, Peeta."

Haymitch considers Elsabet for a few seconds, trying to figure out what she thinks she's doing. He really doesn't want to fall, as fitting an end to this day as that would be. He can all too easily envision himself lying curled up on the floor coughing up blood and fighting for each breath as the two of them look on. Both of them have seen worse from him, of course…

He slants a look at Peeta and tries to appear sorry for being difficult. But the kid has stepped back, abandoning him to yet another painful humiliation. Like hell Peeta doesn't get off on this.

"Haymitch? Let me help you get up," Elsabet says to him. How is a reed-thin woman like Elsabet Everdeen going to help him? He's going to fall. He looks to Peeta again and tells himself to just get it over with. It's better than falling. He lifts both hands in Peeta's direction, palms up.

Elsabet backs away. "Take him to the sofa. Have him lie down," she snaps.

Having made his point, Peeta comes forward and hauls Haymitch to his feet. Haymitch walks slowly over to the sofa and half-falls onto it. He doesn't bother to resist when Peeta eases him down into a prone position and brushes his hair to the side. The sudden sharp sting on the left side of his ass flashes an image of a butterfly before his closed eyes, palm-sized and sapphire-colored. Then the world fades away.

"There's no reason for him to be awake during this," Elsabet says, setting the empty syringe aside and tugging Haymitch's clothes back into place.

"Thank you," Peeta says sincerely. Morphling is expensive, and a Seam healer like Elsabet never has enough of it to go around. It's usually kept back for those who are dying of their injuries. He's never known Elsabet to break her rule on the matter before, although Prim hasn't yet learned to be as detached about others' pain. "He's had a hard time lately, and then there's what happened today… Just, thanks for giving him that."

"Uh huh," Elsabet says, beginning to work the disinfected scissors around the rope. "How'd he get that bruise on his jaw?"

"I don't know. Maybe he landed on a rock or something when he fell," Peeta lies smoothly.

"A rock," Elsabet scoffs. "He's scared of you."

"That leaning away thing? He does that with everybody! He just doesn't like being touched."

"I know what a bruise left by someone's fist looks like, Peeta. Don't speak to me like I'm a fool. The part that bothers me is its fresh. His jaw is still a little swollen. So it wasn't one of those testosterone-fueled brawls you men seem to have such an affinity for. You hit him tonight, didn't you, while he was choking on this rope and barely able to walk." It's not a question.

"Elsabet, please, you've got the wrong idea. I wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't you?"

"Well- but-"

"I wouldn't get involved, usually. Haymitch is a grown man, despite how he chooses to behave. He should be able to take care of himself. But it troubles me to know that Katniss is married to a man who would do that."

"Listen-" Peeta says heatedly, and then falls silent. He's startled by the lack of an interruption this time, and utterly unprepared to try to impose sense on this situation.

"Well?" Elsabet prompts in a coldly polite tone.

"Okay, I hit him. Just this once. Never before tonight. Katniss wasn't there when I woke up this morning. They've both been gone all day. I found them this evening at Haymitch's house. I saw Katniss first, and I just wasn't thinking clearly. It looked like someone had attacked her. Strangled her, right? And I guess I just thought…"

"You thought Haymitch attacked her?" Elsabet asks, still working the scissors.

"I didn't see his neck until I'd knocked him onto the floor," Peeta tells her. His hand reaches out and hovers over the bruise, stopping short of actually making contact.

"Go ahead. He's unconscious."

Peeta brushes his thumb along the length of Haymitch's jaw. "I'm sorry."

"He can't hear you anymore than he can feel you." Elsabet pulls the scissors upward and closes the blades with a loud _snick_. "Got it!" At last the rope is pulled free and dropped indifferently to the floor. She begins to clean the blood away. "I can stitch this up and protect it with a bandage until it starts to heal. I think he'll make a full recovery. This time, anyway."


	23. Bright Young Things

Note: Thanks for the follow, Marblez!

Note 2: Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato! Peeta's a thoroughly nice guy, and I hope I didn't write him too dark in the previous chapter. I just wanted to suggest that he can be overwhelmed and misinterpret things and act out of impulse instead of reason, the same as the rest of them. That's why I like him.

But I admit to sharing your dislike of Gale. Just something about him. I don't know.

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 23**

Helena Ringle, the soon-to-be Games Escort for District Seven, checks her ice blond wig in the mirror. Behind her Cristy lies nude on the spacious bed, her pretty emerald eyes half-closed. Exhausted, poor dear, Helena thinks as she smiles at her reflection and carefully checks her teeth. It was really quite a performance. And in just a few months when she takes her place as Escort for the 75th Games, they'll be plenty of time for encores. One of the many perks of the job.

Sometimes she still has trouble believing how marvelously everything has worked out for her. There had only been two escort positions available when her class had graduated from the Games Academy last summer. Two spots for a class of fourteen. Helena is young, only just twenty, and she knows she's beautiful. But all of them were young and beautiful, or they never would have been accepted into the Escort Finishing Program. Two positions meant that twelve of them would have to settle for something less glamorous- enroll in one of the other Academy programs if they could, or else leave the school altogether.

This year's offers had been Districts Two and Seven, but of course Two had been snapped up by an established Escort- thirty-three year old Sophila Opal from Five, and much good may it do the grasping old woman just two years before mandatory retirement age!

Between Five and Seven there wasn't much difference, and competition had been positively cut-throat. Helena had felt she might as well have been in the Arena on several occasions during her final two months at the school. Who'd have thought the other girls, fellow Capitolites for goodness' sake, could be so devilishly _mean_? But Offers Day had finally arrived, and a beaming Madame Francesca had called her up on stage and presented her with the gilt envelope bearing the stylized number seven. And the rest was history. Or it certainly will be, she tells herself.

Seven has four Victors to manage, a respectable starting number: Melchor, Blight, Cristy, and Joanna. Helena has been treating herself to one every other month. It's a stretch on her current salary, but she'll be making a lot more money soon. Anyway, Escorts are expected to be the epitome of high society; with the finest clothes, the most charming manners and bearing, and a demonstrated liking for all the pastimes of the wealthy. And Helena is going to make a name for herself as one of the best before she's twenty-five.

Satisfied with her appearance, Helena pirouettes happily in front of the mirror before trotting over to the bed. She rests a hand on one of Cristy's perfect breasts and gives it an approving squeeze. "You were fabulous, baby," she says. "You go ahead and rest until your handler gets here. You earned it."

"Yeah, thanks," Cristy murmurs. She rolls over so that her back is to her new Escort. Helena smiles affectionately and lets herself out of the hotel room.

Stepping out into night air redolent of éclairs and pastries from the café next door, she sets out on the short walk to her favorite club. Her traditional post-appointment cosmopolitan with two maraschino cherries awaits.

"Helena Ringle?" a voice says from behind her in tones of pleased surprise. Helena turns around and sees a man with chin-length golden hair, matching five-o'clock-shadow, and bright gray eyes standing a few feet behind her. He's distinctly foreign-looking, although he's dressed in high-end designer clothes. She recognizes at once that he's someone she should know, and she grasps for his identity even as she steps toward him. Then she has it. This is Haymitch, one of Twelve's Victors.

"Haymitch! Lovely to see you, dear. I didn't know you were in the Capitol this week," she says warmly. They've never met, but everyone knows Haymitch. He's very, very famous- or infamous, depending on whom you ask. The important thing here is that _he_ recognized _her_. Helena basks in the knowledge that she, too, is a celebrity now. She has arrived.

"I can't believe I'm really talking to Helena Ringle!" Haymitch gushes, looking delighted. "Congratulations on becoming Seven's Escort." He gives her a slow, appreciative up-and-down look. "No mystery why they picked you."

She giggles and bats her eyes prettily. "Thank you, thank you! Perhaps we'll have the chance to get better acquainted before the next Games."

"Why not now?" he asks, low and sexy. "I've got the night off." Even his voice is exotic, a rough-edged drawl that lengthens some words and drops consonants from others. She's never heard anything like it.

She's been confining herself to her own Victors so far, in the interest of getting to know those she'll be managing. But she can no more turn down such an offer than she could refuse a diamond broad-collar from Trudy's. As much as the Victors enjoy their roles, they tend to stick to the companions their handlers send them to. It's a rare compliment for one of them to approach someone on their own.

"Okay. Which hotel do you favor?" she asks. "Your choice."

"Ah, let's see." He looks vaguely off into the distance, contemplating the various options. "Lovely Baltic was my very first time, so I'm always a bit nostalgic for that one." His eyes move back to her, waiting and expectant.

He's testing her. He means to see if she's really one of the big cats now. Lovely Baltic is very posh and exorbitantly expensive. It's one of maybe three hotels in the Capitol where the room would cost as much as the Victor. Helena barely restrains herself from fidgeting. She _could_, she supposes. Technically she could, though it would take most of the money she has in her account. And it's either that or pretend to remember a pressing appointment and give up this unexpected boon. One thing she absolutely couldn't do is admit that she can't afford it.

Haymitch shrugs slightly, his smile becoming knowing. "I don't mean to keep you from anything. I mean, you're _Helena Ringle_. You're probably all kinds of busy." Is that a faint note of regret in his exotic voice?

She speaks before he can turn away. "Forgive me, dear; I was a tiny bit distracted for a second. Lovely Baltic is one of my favorite places to stay. Shall we?"

She takes the arm he offers her and they set off down the sidewalk together. On the way he asks her admiring questions about the Games Academy and her plans as a new Escort. He's so pleasant to talk to that she's actually a bit startled when she comes to the end of a detailed description of her Reaping dress and realizes that he's steered her into a long, narrow alley between two tall limestone buildings.

"Are you sure this is the right way, dear?" she asks, peering around them. She should have summoned a car. He doesn't live here, so of course he doesn't know the city as well as she does. No doubt he was trying to show off and is now hopelessly turned around. It's cute, and she giggles again and snuggles a little closer to him to show that she doesn't mind. She'll just go ahead and summon a nice town car. Her eyes light up as it strikes her that they can have cosmopolitans on the way to the hotel.

He turns toward her and then he pushes her back against the wall, one hand covering her mouth and one shoulder pinning her in place as he slips his other hand into his jacket. She's too surprised to struggle, and what she feels is sheer bewilderment. What _can_ he be doing?

He produces a tiny glass bottle of milky-looking liquid and pulls the stopper with his teeth. The hand over her mouth slides down to her chin, strong fingers pressing into her cheeks and tilting her head back. Then he's tipping the liquid into her mouth, and it's mild and sweet-tasting and she swallows it quickly so she can tell him that he's really being much too rough. Within seconds she forgets all about his hand on her face. A soft sigh escapes her lips and her eyes close. She goes limp and he lowers her gently to the ground.

Haymitch sits down beside the beautiful young woman and doesn't look at her. His hands are shaking. All done, he tells himself. It wasn't so bad. No, not so bad. One of his hands slides out of his lap and his fingers drum a nervous tattoo on the pavement.

She deserved it. She's just another Capitolite, just like all the others. He looks over at her. She's so damn young. It shouldn't have worked. What the hell did a kid like that want with him anyway? If she hadn't followed him it wouldn't have happened. And that's… that's just such bullshit.

He picks up the bottle from where it fell and holds it up to the light. It only held an ounce of poison to start with and there can't be more than two or three drops left in the bottom. He puts it to his lips anyway and sucks out whatever remains. His hands are shaking almost too badly to tuck the vial away again.

"Sorry," he tells the lump beside him that used to be a beautiful woman before she made the mistake of trusting him.

He'd forgotten what it feels like to kill up close. He still can't remember ever feeling quite like this. It's almost like vertigo. She'd been no danger to him, or to the kids. She hadn't even been one of Them, with their goddamn hands everywhere and their endless, sickening superiority. Maybe she could have been talked around to their side. No chance of that now, though.

His fucking worthless apology wouldn't count for shit, even if she could hear it.

He crawls around in front of her and leans forward, memorizing her face. "Helena," he whispers. "Helena. Don't forget."

It takes him a couple of tries to get up. Apparently there was enough poison left to do something. He braces himself against the wall and considers his options.

He could just walk back out into the street like this. People would assume he was drunk. It wouldn't be the first time he's used his well-known alcoholism to get himself out of trouble or to get away with breaking the rules. But that would make him more noticeable and Helena (He looks hard at her. _Don't you forget_.) had been right. He wasn't supposed to be in the Capitol this week.

He could stay here and allow himself to pass out next to his victim's corpse. Then he could wake up (always assuming the poison doesn't kill him) in a cell in the Capitol dungeons. That's probably a step down from the privileged life he's gotten used to as one of Snow's whores.

He leans over Helena's body and ends up toppling over right onto her, bloodying his nose and scraping his cheek on the rough pavement.

"Goddamn it to fucking hell," he growls, scrabbling off of her and sitting up. "Maybe make sure there's enough left to actually kill you next time, you tawdry little clown." He cleans up the smears of blood on the ground with the cuff of his jacket and then wipes the blood off his face, wincing. Another signature move from Panem's Most Famous Lush. Give him a hand, ladies and gentlemen.

With another savage-sounding curse, he yanks the platinum blond wig off the dead woman's head. "Sorry, Heather, Ellen, whoever the fuck you are." Why not? He's done just about everything else, so isn't this the next logical step? He pulls the wig on, tucking his own golden hair under it as well as he can and pulling some of the long strands forward to hide his face. Then he turns the collar of his jacket up and fights his way to his feet again. At least he won't have to worry about his brands giving him away. He only takes off the black gloves Katniss gave him when his handlers force him to.

He moves slowly towards the end of the alley, bracing himself on the wall. Choosing his moment, he slinks out onto the sidewalk, his head bowed so that the long wig and upturned collar hide his face. He makes his way slowly along the path to the rendezvous, a broad-shouldered man in expensive dark-colored clothes and long black gloves, with pale blond curls falling halfway down his back.

So glad you could save Ilona Navelle's job for her, he sneers silently at this ridiculous figure. The silly woman who had been District Seven's Escort for the last four years had let herself become pregnant, and pregnant wasn't fashionable. So she had been encouraged to step aside in favor of a newer, more slender model. But Ilona was either sympathetic to the Underground or actually a member of the Underground, or maybe just too empty-headed and ineffectual to catch on to the true loyalties of Seven's Victors. Maybe someday, if you're a good boy and do as you're told, you'll be trusted enough to know which it is, he tells himself with a sarcastic smirk.

In any case, poor little Heather back there (That's not it. That's _wrong_.) had been a happy Capitolite through-and-through. With her out of the picture, Plutarch thinks he can arrange for Ilona to stay on. It's awfully short notice to pull one of the other new graduates in. Worth a try, old fellow, Plutarch had told him. Haymitch had nodded from his place on the bed, wishing he could think of a way in which killing Plutarch would help the Underground.

His head is pounding miserably by now. Maybe it was enough, and it's just going to take longer?

"Timerian?"

Haymitch glances up through the waves of platinum curls and moves toward the figure standing in the doorway of the dimly lit bar.

"Timerian, good, we've been keeping the poker game until you got here," the man says jovially. Haymitch doesn't recognize him, but he'd hardly expected Plutarch to meet him here. He follows the man inside and through another door that closes behind them. The man turns to look him over.

"Timerian, is that you?" he asks, unsure.

Haymitch pulls the wig off and sits down heavily on the floor. His nose is bleeding again.

The man takes this in; looking from the bloody, disheveled man to the discarded wig and back a couple of times. "Done?"

"Done," Haymitch replies.

"We don't take trophies," he says, looking angry. "What do you think this is? Are you drunk?"

"Had a little taste of what you gave me for the girl, you sanctimonious prick."

"You stupid _pet_," he says with an incredulous roll of his eyes. "How much?"

Haymitch looks up at him, seething. "Aren't you supposed to being getting me out of here? Or did you want to play a little first? That's the usual deal, isn't it?"

"I ought to. I just ought to, since it seems to be the only thing you're halfway decent at. Maybe next time I will. You sit still." And he turns and leaves the room, muttering darkly. He comes back with a glass that has a splash of dark brown liquid in the bottom and a plastic bag. "Drink this."

Haymitch downs it in a single gulp, past caring what it is. A moment later he's bent over almost double, throwing up into the bag. It goes on for a long, long time, his stomach cramping painfully and his lungs burning as he tries to stop retching long enough to take a breath. At last it slows and stops, leaving him gasping.

"Get up." A hand grabs his hair and yanks him up. Haymitch responds by striking out as hard as he can. His fist connects and there's a wet crunching sound.

"You stupid, filthy pet!" the man rages, letting go of him.

"Yeah, you already said that," Haymitch pants, grinning.

"Get in that box," the man orders, one hand cupping his nose. Blood trickles from between his fingers.

The box is a thick plastic crate, about three feet on a side and three deep. Haymitch is able to fit by curling himself up, but there's barely any room to move once he's inside.

"You'll only be in there for three or four hours. You'll have plenty of air, even if it doesn't feel like it. So lie still, shut up, and you can use the time to fantasize about the next time you'll be spreading your legs for the President," the man tells him in a voice brimming with hatred and contempt. "Oh, and you have vomit in your hair. Should smell just like home."

"Bye, precious! Kisses," Haymitch replies, laughing. The lid slams down and he hears the latches click into place. Total darkness engulfs him, pressing in from all sides. In the ensuing silence he licks the blood off his knuckles, savoring it. He tucks his hair behind his ears. He tries to turn over and finds he doesn't have enough room. He runs his hands along as much of the inside of the box as he can reach. He begins to gnaw on his knuckles.

Some three hours later he becomes aware of noise and movement again. There's a muffled click and the lid of his crate is raised. Haymitch slits his eyes against the sudden light.

"Hello, Haymitch," a hushed voice says. A heavyset man with tanned skin and glasses gives him a friendly smile as he sets the lid carefully aside. "We have to be quiet, okay?" Haymitch nods, sitting up painfully. His whole body is throbbing from the hours of lying curled up in the crate. Pins and needles erupt all the way down his right arm and leg as he moves them. The knuckles of both hands are skinned, red and sticky.

"I'm Wren. You're on a coal train, about sixteen hours from 12. Specifically, you're in the first aid closet. You'll stay in here until we get to the station, and then I'll come get you and you'll get off disguised as one of the loading men. I'm the med tech on this run, and I have the only key to this closet, but you'll have to keep very quiet. If I need to open it I'll tap on the door and you get back into the box as quickly and silently as you can." He produces a gray bundle from underneath his shirt. "You can go ahead and change into these. Your own clothes should fit in the pockets," he says as he hands the bundle over. "There's a bucket for you in the corner there, if you need it. Sorry about that, man, but we can't really have you coming out of the supply closet to use the head, right?" He shrugs apologetically. "I've rigged up a loose floorboard here so you can empty it. Just make sure we're moving at speed when you dump it so no one notices." He pauses, catching his breath. "Well. I think that pretty much covers it. Any questions?"

"No, that all sounds super," Haymitch says in a whisper, unbuttoning his shirt. "Don't you worry." He shrugs out of the shirt and shakes out the uniform one. "I won't make a peep."

"I just want to say that I admire what you're doing," Wren says sincerely. "Without guys like you, there wouldn't be a Resistance. I'm proud to have a hand in getting you back home safely."

Taken aback, Haymitch just stares at him wordlessly. After a moment, Wren looks away, his smile faltering. "There's a box of antibacterial wipes on the second shelf down. You should clean your hands up, and that cut on your cheek." His smile renews itself. "Looks like you've been in some fight, huh?" Haymitch still doesn't answer, and Wren stands up and says, "Well… see you later, then." He slips out of the closet, closing and locking the door behind him.


	24. Playing Around

Note: Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato! I actually did consider writing that for one of my chapters, but there didn't seem to be any good place to put it. Also, Haymitch has a very addictive personality, and the last thing he needs is a second drug habit. I'm psyched that you enjoyed the chapter! But I have to ask (naughty me): What _does_ the J stand for?

A Note, an Apology, and a Promise: I'll be taking a break from updating this story for a while. I am definitely _not_ abandoning it. But my postings have caught up with my writing, and I need time to figure out how the next part goes. Also, writing is just more fun for me when I have the leisure to jump around to whatever part of the story catches my mind at the moment, instead of always focusing on the next sequential part.

I will resume updating at least once a week as soon as I have the next twenty chapters ready or on May 9th, 2015 (100 days hence), whichever comes first. I'm sorry for the delay, but I just really want to do right by this story.

Many thanks to all of you who have read this far, and to everyone who has reviewed/followed/favorite'd. You're all just really excellent people!

The next part will include the Victory Tour, Katniss and Peeta's baby, covert missions, more appointments, the 75th Hunger Games, and whatever else inspires me. And lots and lots of drama/angst. That's a given.

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 24**

"Where are they?" Eustace Eckhart, director extraordinaire, says for perhaps the fifteenth time. This is the opening refrain of what has become a well-known speech on this interminable morning. The only noticeable variation is the increasing volume and tones of outrage in which the lines are delivered.

Trying to head him off, Peeta says, "Let's all just try to stay calm, okay? My wife shouldn't be upset in her condition. And I'm sure they'll be here any minute now."

Not in the least grateful for his efforts, Katniss surreptitiously delivers a sharp kick to his ankle, the movement only partially hidden by her long dress. Peeta winces and tilts his head towards the appointed director for the Victory Tour, raising his eyebrows. You want to hear it again?

Not to be derailed, Eustace continues in something painfully akin to a screech. "They were supposed to be here at eight sharp! I _thought_ they were professionals. If I'd had any inkling of this complete and utter lack of consideration, I'd have never agreed to work with them. I mean, how hard can it be to get one single Victor, who isn't even the main attraction, clean and dressed and over here on time? We had both the stars ready early! Well, if they think they're ever going to work as a prep team again they're much mistaken, I can tell you!"

Peeta nods along in what he hopes is a sympathetic fashion and pats Katniss's hand. She pulls her hand away at once. But she's making an effort this morning, having long since conceded the necessity of playing to the cameras. She covers her impulsive move by taking Peeta's hand in hers, a plastic smile crossing her features. Truth to tell, Katniss is rapidly becoming as exasperated with the delay as Eustace has been since about 8:02.

She and Peeta had been woken up at 6am and immediately surrounded by their respective prep teams and frog marched into separate rooms. There they had each spent an uncomfortable two hours being scrubbed, shaved, waxed, pumiced, brushed, and subjected to high-strung rambling in three constantly overlapping voices. At one point in Katniss's dressing room there had been a brief tantrum over a set of powder poufs that had been improperly packed. It had started out funny and rapidly escalated to alarming as Katniss's prep team had come close to deciding this warranted starting the whole process again from the beginning.

It had all culminated in being made to put on typically lavish and impractical clothes and weighted down with about five pounds of jewelry. Judging by the look on Peeta's face when they had been reunited in the parlor, he hadn't fared much better. Her husband had clearly been holding onto the shreds of his patience with both hands.

Feeling mutinous, Katniss pulls her hand free again and twitches at the diamond and sapphire pendant around her neck. Just what she needed- more unwanted weight to carry around with her. By now she has abandoned any misgivings about how Haymitch would have reacted to all this and begun to hope they went over him with a fine-tooth comb and a pair of tweezers. Of course they're probably just pressing gallons of coffee on him in an attempt to get him straight enough to walk over here without support.

"Maybe it would help if I went over and checked on them," Peeta suggests.

"And mess up your suit? Oh no, dear," Venia says at once. "It's sweet of you to offer, but we're quite enough behind schedule without having to do a touch-up on you."

At this point there is a perfunctory knock on the door and someone lets themselves in. Peeta and Katniss both spring to their feet as two Peacekeepers enter the parlor.

"Who's in charge here?" one asks, looking from one Capitolite to another. His companion keeps his pale green eyes fixed on Katniss and Peeta. There's a palpable tension about both of them. As it bleeds out into the atmosphere even Eustace looks uneasy. Then, no doubt remembering that he's the highest ranking person present, he steps forward.

"That would be me. Eustace Eckhart, senior director with Capitol Productions." After the briefest hesitation, he thrusts a hand out for the Peacekeeper to shake.

"Haymitch has been arrested for assault and battery against three Capitolites," the Peacekeeper announces. His second hasn't taken his eyes off the other two Victors. "We've got him in one of the holding cells in the Justice Building."

Eustace stumbles a couple of steps back and collapses onto a chair, looking shocked. "He- _What_? Are Trudea and Romilda okay? And Ignatius?"

"I don't know. Not my department. They're alive and on their feet, anyway. Commander Thread detailed a team to take them back to the train."

"This is simply outrageous. How could this have been allowed to happen?"

The Peacekeeper's voice had been clipped and just a little smug up to now. In his face was a clear recognition and enjoyment of the fact that he'd been the one to deliver the news that had knocked this Capitolite on his ass. Belatedly, awareness dawns. This guy might try to blame the _Peacekeepers_ for the old drunk's behavior. "Now, wait just a-"

Eustace is already talking over him. "Everybody pack up. We're getting out of here. We'll just have to take the first pictures on the train. Maybe we can stage something."

"What about Haymitch?" Peeta asks.

Eustace considers, snapping his fingers in a nervous rhythm. "Yes, what to do with Haymitch? We can't very well leave him behind. Hmm. Take him to the train and put him in his cabin in restraints. I suppose that will do for now." He gives the Peacekeeper a look that speaks eloquently of his opinion of their competence. "Make sure he's secure this time."

"You don't want him punished?" the Peacekeeper asks, raising his eyebrows in consternation. The commander won't like that at all.

"Well, yes, of course he should be punished," Eustace says irritably. "We really don't have time for this, you know." He takes out his pocket watch, flips it open, and glances at it pointedly. "What's the usual punishment for something like this?"

"Commander Thread made a point of consulting Twelve's book of Disciplinary Procedures. It's been twenty-one years since the last time we had an attack on a Capitolite in this District, you know. The punishment prescribed in this case is to break both wrists and one ankle and put the prisoner in the stocks for three days."

"Is it? The lengths one has to go to in order to make these people behave like civilized human beings. Oh well, I'm afraid we can't have that. How's he going to perform for the Victory Tour if he can't walk? This is a pageant. Everything needs to be elegant and impressive. There are dances, for goodness sake. You'll just have to go ahead and put him on the train."

"All respect, but don't you think that sets a dangerous precedent?"

"You can do whatever you want with him in thirteen days when the Tour is over. That's really the best I can offer you."

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Dell, the leader of this happy little procession, tugs on the short chain lead attached to Haymitch's cuffs. It's a mistake. Haymitch isn't in the best of moods at the moment, and that's the _third damn time_. He yanks his wrists back sharply, causing Dell to drop the leash. There's laughter from the other two Peacekeepers tasked with taking the old drunk to the train, and Dell flushes and snatches up the trailing end of the chain. Haymitch smirks at him, making no move to act on the sudden freedom.

"Maybe you should give that to one of the men, honey," he drawls, bringing guffaws from Terre and Niam.

Around them the residents of 12 abruptly look away from the spectacle of one of their Victors being led through the Town in chains. The party has been the object of stares and whispers since they left the Justice Building, but no one wants to get caught laughing at a Peacekeeper. An isolated giggle breaks the suddenly still morning, and Dell looks around furiously for the source.

"Let's get going," Niam snaps. "I've got better things to do with my morning than babysit this souse."

Dell faces front again, looping the chain around his hand. Haymitch follows him without further comment. Truthfully he doesn't mind Dell all that much, or his stupid little leash. In fact, in light of recent events, he'd have to say Dell is his favorite Peacekeeper. There the guy is, strutting down the street in front of Haymitch and the other two thugs just as though he's been entrusted with leading some really important mission. And you're just doing so _well_, Haymitch thinks at him.

"So well," he mutters, an ironic smile curving his lips. "You just keep doing what you're doing, cap'n. The country is behind you."

Dell casts an irritated, suspicious look back at him. "What's he babbling about?"

"Who knows? I don't speak drunk," Niam says, affecting a tone of boredom that is immediately undermined by the amused smile he shares with Terre.

"If he's making you nervous I'll take the lead," Terre teases. "_Honey_."

Dell glares, red-faced. "Keep quiet, you," he orders Haymitch, tapping his baton threateningly.

Haymitch shrugs, agreeably enough. Part of his mind is still playing with the idea of how really likeable this guy is compared to ol' Niam and ol' Terre. He can _see_ Dell, every inch of him. Haymitch finds that he likes that in a person more and more as time goes by. And because he can see Dell so very well, he's known since they set out on this little jaunt that underneath all his posturing Dell is still a little bit afraid of 12's famous Drunken Victor.

Not so long ago, all of them were afraid of him. Somewhere in the last decade or so, they'd gotten the idea that Haymitch had 'friends in high places.' For several years there, he'd actually been relatively safe from harassment by men like these. Of course, Thread had pretty much put paid to the idea of his Capitolite protectors. But there are still a few gullible hold-outs like his pal Dell, here.

He gives Dell a moment to recover to his full level of cockiness, gauging it by that ludicrous strut. Then he calls out, "Are we there yet?"

For just a second he can see Dell's shoulders tensing even through his heavy uniform. Haymitch grins, mentally daring him to turn around.

"I gotta piss, so I hope we're almost there."

Dell quickens his pace, tugging on the chain again.

Haymitch yanks it back, eyes flashing. But this time Dell has it looped around his hand and he doesn't drop it. Haymitch considers this new information. If he really tried, there's no doubt he could pull free again. But what he's done so far has basically been just playing with them. If he actually struggled, Niam and Terre would use their batons on him. It's been well over a decade since a Peacekeeper laid into him with a baton. But if Niam and Terre do that in the middle of Town, on the morning of the damn Tour Day, in no time they'll be hitting him as often as they did in his early twenties.

Well, shit. He really is being led down the street on a fucking leash.

Haymitch quickens his steps, shortening the distance between him and Dell. He wonders if Dell has a hard-on right now, decides he probably does.

There's enough slack in the leash now, so Haymitch reaches down.

"What are you doing?" Terre asks.

"Oh, relax. I've got the same stuff as you." Haymitch looks over at Terre, raising his eyebrows. "Well, I _guess_ you've got one."

Belatedly sensing trouble, Dell turns around again- just in time for Haymitch to aim and piss on his shoes. He'd been planning on Dell's ankles, but how could he resist that target?

All three of the Peacekeepers stare at him in a tableau that Haymitch takes several hundred mental pictures of. Dell's mouth is opening and closing like a fish. Cool. He tucks himself back in and zips up his fly as they continue to stare. He begins to entertain the fantasy of casually taking the leash from Dell and walking the rest of the way to the train on his own.

Then there's a bewildered-sounding laugh from the other side of the street, followed by a very brief spattering of applause. Right, Haymitch thinks to himself. Main Street in the middle of Tour Day morning. Spectators.

Niam and Terre simultaneously break down. They go reeling away, bent almost double with hysterical laughter. All pretence of escorting a dangerous prisoner to the train has fled.

Ignoring them and the delighted residents of 12 alike, Haymitch smiles slyly at Dell. "We should probably get going. Effie has an unhealthy obsession with schedules. Just saying."

"I'm going to make sure you won't be sitting down for a _week_," Dell growls, pulling out his baton.

"You don't want to do that," Haymitch warns him. "You'll still have to take me to the train afterwards, won't you now?"

Dell looks from Haymitch to his laughing comrades to the people across the street who are watching the stand-off out of the corners of their eyes while ostensibly looking at anything else. He wavers between their ridicule and the imagined anger of a group of celebrity-worshipping Capitolites. Then he whacks Haymitch once across the right hip, barely more than a hard tap, and puts the baton away.

"Come on, you idiots!" he calls, wheeling back around. Haymitch follows him, judging that Dell's been pushed about as far as can be considered prudent. Anything more and the man might do something squirrelly. He has that look about him.

Haymitch decides he likes Dell even more without that silly strutting.

1234567890

Peeta shows up alone and starts right in with the lecture.

"They told us you attacked your prep team. Why would you do that? Are you just that drunk? Because that's the only explanation I can think of right now. Haymitch, you can't do things like this."

"Where's Katniss?" Haymitch asks, pointedly ignoring this little speech.

"Don't change the subject. Why did you do something so- so stupid?"

"Okay," Haymitch takes a deep breath, steeling himself. "This is hard to admit. Okay. Here goes. I think I might have a drinking problem."

For the second time this morning he finds a man staring at him in frank startlement before breaking into laughter. Haymitch gives the (_boy_) a slow smile in return, eyes glinting sardonically.

"Well, I guess that's an honest answer at least," Peeta concedes, still smiling. "I don't suppose you have any interest in addressing that problem."

"I've kind of been figuring it would solve itself if I gave it enough time."

Peeta nods, unsurprised. "Seriously, Haymitch, why did you attack them? Did they just get hurt trying to wake you up or something?" If that's all it was, he can fix this. Any rational person would have to admit that Haymitch can't help how he is when someone startles him awake.

Haymitch looks away, eyes traveling around the cabin before returning to Peeta and then dropping to the floor. And Peeta knows it isn't going to be that easy.

"They got handsy, okay?" Haymitch says in a low, frustrated tone. "They didn't have the right to do that. They didn't buy me."

Peeta tries to think about these statements objectively, because Haymitch probably isn't able to state it any clearer than 'handsy'. Peeta finds many of the things his own prep team does intrusive, uncomfortable, and totally devoid of any respect for him as another human being. The easiest way to get through the ordeal is to temporarily adopt their viewpoint. He supposes deliberately objectifying himself as an inanimate thing for them to pretty up however they like isn't the healthiest way to handle it, but it works for him. Even if it seems to take a little longer each time to discard that mindset after they finish with him.

Unpleasant and dehumanizing as a lot of it is, they've never done anything overtly sexual to him.

"First off, no one has the right to do _that_ to you," he says, feeling like he's said some variation of this at least five or six dozen times in the last six months.

"That. So vague," Haymitch says in a thoughtful, almost taunting voice. "Why so vague?"

"Please don't start," Peeta says helplessly, feeling the conversation slipping out of his grasp. He still can't tell if Haymitch twists his words like this out of deepening psychosis or if this is just his manipulative way of ending conversations he doesn't want to have. And he still hasn't come up with an effective retort to it.

"I think I broke someone's jaw," Haymitch announces. "And I'm pretty damn sure one of the others has a broken nose."

"How nice for you. Did it help?"

"Yeah, it did. I fucking hate Capitolites."

How to get through to someone with so many gaping holes in their reasoning? "Your prep team didn't assault you. They were just doing their jobs. And now you're wearing cuffs. So think about it, and try again: did it help?"

Haymitch looks down at his wrists. Dell left the cuffs on out of pure spite. "Can you get these things off me?"

Peeta gives up. There's no talking to him this morning. "How do you think I'm going to do that?"

"Well, I guess the attendants have the key. You _could_ go get it." And he actually makes a shooing motion towards the door, the glitter on his hand and wrist flashing bleakly.

"Have they told you what they're going to do to you?"

That gets Haymitch's attention. "No. What?" Fuck, he hopes they aren't going to whip him again. There'd be flies this time, and there wouldn't be even the meager relief of the snow coat. And what will Snow do to him and the kids if he ends up in Victor's Hospital again? He _could_ provoke Thread into whipping him to death this time. Scared gray eyes fall on Peeta, and become bitter. The kids still have to be protected. He is so screwed.

Peeta sits down on the bed, almost despairing. He just can't right now. He can't think about how they're going to torture Haymitch as soon as the Tour is over, or what it will mean for all three of them.

"Later, okay? We'll deal with it later," he says, and drops his face into his hands.

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "What's with you, kid? No one died." This draws no appreciable response. He understands on some level that he's being an ass, but damn it. The kid's like a bottomless abyss of questions today, most of which he ought to know better than to ask. Awkwardly, he takes a seat beside Peeta. "Come on, now," he mutters. "None of that. It'll be alright."

Peeta swallows a couple of times, hoping his voice will be steady when he speaks. "No, you won't be alright. As soon as the Tour is over, they're going to break both your wrists and one of your ankles and put you in the stocks for three days. That's 12's penalty for attacking three Capitolites. And I don't think there's anything I can do to stop them."

Haymitch stares at him, speechless. He's scared, but there's also something else, harder to define. It burns the edges of his consciousness, but it feels better than the fear. "Can you get me a drink?"

"Yeah," Peeta says, standing up and swiping the back of his hand across his eyes. "Yeah, of course. I'll be right back, okay?"

"Thanks," Haymitch says quietly.


	25. Tea at the High Table

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follows, Martian Mojo and Sea of Delusions!

Note 2: There will be new chapters posted weekly (and occasionally bi-weekly) at least through the end of August. If this story goes in the direction I think it will, I'm less than a third of the way through writing it so far.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 25**

"Anything to avoid a bath, right?" Katniss says by way of greeting.

Haymitch looks up at her. "Worth it. You smell like strawberries and mint. Who thought that was a good combination?"

"Believe me, the smell is the least of it." She sighs irritably.

"I don't think your husband wants us talking without a monitor."

"It's okay, he'll have had your cabin bugged," she retorts. "I brought you something." She takes a tiny silver object out of her pocket and throws it to him.

Haymitch catches the key and unlocks the cuffs. Walking over to the window of his cabin, he slides it open and flings the restraints out. "So much for those," he says, turning back to her with a smile. His wrists hurt. Too late he thinks he should have pulled at the cuffs after they left him here, really ground them into his skin. Maybe he could have messed up the tattoos. "It's going to be a hell of a Tour," he tells the girl. Without waiting for an answer he brushes past her out of the cabin, heading for the bar.

765

The banquet in District 11 takes place as scheduled, and no one there mentions the horrific culmination of the Victors' Ceremony earlier in the day.

Katniss makes only a token protest against going, knowing that it's already much too late for such acts of defiance. How did it get so late so quickly? Peeta and Haymitch don't even join her in making that much of a gesture. She knows she shouldn't blame them for being so coldly pragmatic, but she can't help it.

The Town Hall where the banquet is held is heavily decorated in greenery. This event is being filmed by Eustace and his assistants as the first part of the thirteen nights Victory Tour special. There'll be a half-hour show for each District and a two-hour finale dedicated to the celebrations in the Capitol. And of course the usual commemorative disc, a toure d' force of editing that will condense the whole thing into two hours and make even District 12 look good- for the three minutes or so that the mining district is usually in view.

Chaff and Seeder are seated at either end of the main table, wearing costumes of green accented with gold and topped with woven crowns of leaves. The Victors from 12 are grouped around Chaff: Haymitch and Effie on his left, Katniss and Peeta on his right. At Seeder's right hand sits District 11's mayor, and their Head Peacekeeper sits at her left side. The rest of the seats are filled by the mayor's wife, his two teenage children, and a woman who has been introduced to them as District 11's oldest citizen. She's small and thin and gray-haired but healthy-looking. A carved wooden cane of deep brown and forest green leans against her chair. A miasma of fear hangs around her like a scent and she darts periodic glances around the table as though to be sure no one is looking at her.

The table is by itself on a dais overlooking the rest of the banquet hall, which is crowded with a hundred hand-picked citizens. All of them look to be in the 20-30 range and are neatly dressed and groomed just like the kids have to be on Reaping Day. In spite of this they seem to be having a good time, laughing and shouting to friends over the general din of conversation. There's plenty of free food for everyone, and richer food than most of them can obtain any other day of the year. Even rarer is the abundance of beer and wine, explaining the occasional burst of off-key singing that erupts at one table or another. Every ten feet along the wall stands a Peacekeeper, silent and watchful. Each of them has a pistol holstered on his or her right hip and their eyes roam ceaselessly over the crowd.

Katniss assumes these people are putting on a show just like she and Peeta and Haymitch have to. They're doubtless under orders to act happy. Helped along by the drink, they're celebrating just as though the Victor had been one of theirs and they were looking forward to a whole year of extra food. Just as though they hadn't watched the public execution of an old man for a single act of defiance.

At the main table the conversation is carried mainly by the mayor and his wife and Effie. The five Victors answer questions politely and offer agreement with any statement put forth. Effie invariably has to nudge Haymitch and repeat the question in an expectant tone before he replies, but they'll put that down to the alcohol. Katniss eyes him enviously and wishes she had such a ready excuse. Even such weak and pathetic gestures as that are not safe for her.

The Head Peacekeeper listens to everything said and fixes his unblinking gaze on whoever's speaking, hunting unorthodoxy even here among the elite. The old woman continues saying nothing and tries to avoid catching anyone's eye.

Eustace surfaces out of the crowd and climbs the steps onto the dais, his TV camera perched on his shoulder. "No, no, don't look at me," he says peremptorily. "Just go on with your conversations. Pretend I'm not here."

The mayor looks at his wife and then around the table before his eyes light on the old woman. "Furrow!" he says loudly. "Why don't you tell our distinguished visitors about how well your son and your daughter-in-law are doing."

Furrow jumps, dropping her fork to the floor. She freezes just like a tharn rabbit and stares at the mayor with wide, trapped eyes.

"Your son is a foreman in charge of the largest apple orchard in this section, is he not, Furrow?" the Head Peacekeeper says pointedly.

"Yes, sir," the woman says in a soft voice. She looks around in the momentary silence and then blurts out very quickly, "My daughter-in-law teaches the 13s through 16s at the local school. It's a good school. I have three healthy grandchildren. They're good kids." Her voice trails off. Summoning up a sick-doggy smile, she adds, "11 is a wonderful place to live. The best!"

"Of course it is," the mayor agrees, nodding enthusiastically as the camera instantly switches to him. "And the life expectancy here is the best in the outer districts. How old are you, Furrow?"

"Seventy-eight, sir," she answers quietly, her eyes on her plate again.

"Seventy-eight!" the mayor repeats, beaming. "And healthy as a horse!"

Eustace gives them all a thumbs-up and a big grin around his camera and then wanders off into the crowd again.

There's a moment of uncomfortable silence at the table before the mayor's wife says brightly, "You know, Katniss, this mulberry wine is made right here in District 11. Isn't it lovely? We're very proud of our local wineries."

"It's very nice," Katniss agrees, smiling and taking a sip of her apple cider. She is visibly pregnant and hasn't tasted the wine all night, but such subtleties and inconvenient facts don't matter at all here at the Hatter's tea party. 'Furrow' isn't any older than fifty-five at the outside, and if a single word the poor frightened woman said was true then she'll dance naked with Peeta around the angel fountain while Haymitch distributes pamphlets advocating sobriety.

Polite and meaningless conversation resumes, and Katniss's eyes happen to wander across the table to Haymitch. He's methodically eating a salad between long drinks from a tankard that the waiter drifts around to top off every few minutes. He eats without a flicker of expression or interest in the food set before him, like it's just another part of a passé performance he's so bored with already. Without a word, he mocks them for anyone who cares to notice. Again, Katniss envies him his 'addled' status. Maybe after the baby is born…

As she watches, Chaff taps the back of Haymitch's hand before reaching past him and taking a dish of cubed melon. "Sorry," he says off-handedly, like anyone who'd accidentally bumped into someone else. There was nothing accidental about that touch.

Haymitch shrugs one shoulder and mutters, "Forgotten." It's a truncated form of the polite Capitol response to an apology: 'It's already forgotten'. Except that the one word all by itself means nothing. The tone, and the there-and-gone look that might almost have been imagined, speak of anger and conspiracy and vengeance. Never forgotten, not ever. They'll pay.

"This is really charming," Haymitch declares after a moment, looking around at the décor with a sardonic smile. "Like eating dinner in the middle of a cornfield."

Chaff laughs. "At least we're the gods of the harvest," he says, drawing attention to his crown. He clinks his goblet of wine against the tankard Haymitch still holds. "Cheers, my friend."

Katniss looks away before she draws any more attention to them.


	26. Idea of Fun

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follows, Bella184ever and Mountainpass!

Note 2: And thanks for the review, Mountainpass. The interplay amongst those three is so complicated. I'm psyched that it's still coming across alright. Lots more of the dark stuff is on the horizon!

Note 3: Thank you, thank you, TheOnlyPotato! I promise future chapters will be more eventful. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to bring Chaff into it, even in such a minor way. For someone we barely meet in the books/movies, he strikes me as all kinds of cool. And he has to be pretty awesome if he's Haymitch's friend, right?

I think and hope that this story isn't even close to over. _Nothing's_ more fun than writing. You know.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 26**

On the second night of the Tour, in District 10, Effie finds out that her two Victors don't know how to dance. She seems oddly surprised by this, in the two seconds before she switches over to denial.

"You mean you can't dance very well," she asserts firmly. "That's alright, my dears. No one expects you to be as skilled on the dance floor as Capitolite children would be."

From his chair in the corner, Haymitch smirks in amusement and takes another gulp of his drink. Here's to Effie- she's always good for a distraction.

"No, we really can't dance at all," Peeta repeats in a slightly apologetic tone. Effie's incredulity seems to demand an apology.

"There aren't a lot of dances in District 12," Katniss deadpans.

"But what about school dances? You're old enough to have been to a couple, surely…"

"School dances?" Katniss rolls her eyes. Only Capitolites.

"New Year's?" Effie asks, her hope dwindling.

"Sorry," Peeta says, shrugging.

"Not-sorry," Katniss mutters under her breath. She must disassociate herself from the pathological kindness.

"President Snow's birthday?" Effie tries in a small voice.

Katniss gives her a poisonous look. Peeta regards her closely, wondering if she's joking. She _could_ be joking. Haymitch laughs, low and insinuating.

Apparently homing in on Haymitch's reaction as the only one of the three she knows what to do with, Effie rounds on him with a glare. "Couldn't you have done something about this? You knew there would be dances on the Tour! Didn't you do anything at all to get them ready?"

"Dancing definitely falls under your purview, not mine. I know because it doesn't involve blood and no one gets maimed, see?" Although Katniss's look says that might be more of a guideline than a rule.

"You've had six months with them," Effie fumes. "What did you do with all that time?"

Haymitch sits back and regards her, his teasing smile fading. What did he do with the last six months? "Well, Effie-"

"You can dance, Haymitch?" Peeta asks hurriedly, intercepting whatever replies Haymitch might have offered.

"No, I _used_ to be able to dance. When I was sixteen. Before your parents ever got together and had the bright idea to procreate."

"You've danced with me before," Effie protests.

Peeta chokes on a bite of lemon cake and hastily grabs one of the cloth napkins from the table. Katniss guffaws in a distinctly unladylike fashion. Haymitch flushes and glares from one of them to the other before settling on Effie.

"You talk too much, Princess."

"Well, I must say I don't see what's so funny. Haymitch has danced with me on at least two or three occasions. He's really quite a good dancer when he isn't too drunk," she continues doggedly, raising her voice to be heard over Katniss's ever increasing merriment.

"Don't have a miscarriage, honey," Haymitch mutters, slumping down in his chair and taking a long pull of his drink.

"The image of _you_ being all romantic-" Her explanation is broken by another spate of laughter. Catching her breath, she continues, "It's just too funny, in a really creepy, messed up way."

"Wasn't being romantic," Haymitch says defensively. "You give the girl what she wants, you get-" He stops abruptly, wide gray eyes sliding over to Effie.

"Haymitch Abernathy! There are children present!" Effie says severely.

"Oh, I don't think such things are _entirely_ unknown to them," he returns, with a sardonic glance at Katniss.

"Further evidence that you've done absolutely nothing to guide them or teach them proper deportment in the last six months. No offense, children, you make a lovely couple," she throws in a quick aside to them.

"Uh, thanks," Peeta says, not at all certain it's the correct reply.

"But you're going to do better, Haymitch," Effie resumes her lecture. "Starting right now. You're going to help me teach them how to dance."

Haymitch makes an indistinct noise of general disagreement.

"Haymitch," Effie says meaningfully, "give the girl what she wants."

Haymitch casts a surprised look at her that quickly turns into a smile. "Get up, Katniss."

Katniss looks indignantly from him to Peeta. Peeta, in any event, is clearly of no help. He's trying not to laugh.

"Go on," he tells her cheerfully. "I don't mind a bit."

"Oh, well, as long as you don't mind," Katniss says sarcastically as she stands and faces Haymitch.

Haymitch steps closer to her, uncomfortably close, invading her space. He takes her right hand in his left. "Don't worry, the glitter's not going to rub off on you," he drawls. His other hand finds her waist. "Put your hand on my shoulder."

"Anytime you start minding this, Peeta, you just let me know," Katniss says, reluctantly obeying the instruction.

"Haymitch," Effie says in an impatient tone. "There's no point doing this if you refuse to do it right."

"Of course, Princess," he accedes. He lets go of Katniss and takes a couple of steps back. Then he executes a graceful bow that, combined with everything else about his bearing at the moment, gives more of an impression of dangerous insanity barely held in check than one of courtliness. Katniss awkwardly copies the movement, drawing an exasperated tut from Effie.

"No, no, no, Katniss! Gentlemen bow; ladies curtsey."

"Lady?" Haymitch scoffs at Katniss. "I suppose in the broadest sense of the word…"

The reply to this is too obvious to bother voicing. Instead, Katniss conveys it perfectly with a sneer that might have been copied from Haymitch's own repertoire.

"Why must you two be so unpleasant to each other?" Effie asks.

"Don't bother," Peeta tells her. "This is actually friendly for them. They're doing really well so far. Proud of you both!" he adds, grinning.

"Shut up, kid," Haymitch snaps at exactly the same time Katniss says, "Shut up, Peeta." Then they go back to glaring at each other.

"What's a curtsey?" Katniss asks.

"Bend your knees and lift your skirt," Haymitch tells her with an exaggerated leer.

"This is a _fine_ time for you to stop being over-protective, Peeta," Katniss says, crossing her arms.

"That's not what curtsey means!" Effie protests. "Well, it is, but- Here, watch me." She curtsies gracefully. "The idea is to keep the hem of your dress off the ground. Not-," she throws a dirty look in Haymitch's direction, "to raise your skirt up."

"That's stupid," Katniss opines.

"More stupid than bowing to a damn teenager?" Haymitch says sullenly. Somewhere in the background, Peeta drops his head into his hands.

"I can't believe I'm stuck doing this with _you_. You-" She stops, then finishes obscurely, "You can't even hunt." Effie tilts her head confusedly at the non sequitur.

"Well, aren't you conceited."

"I'm not dancing. Tell them I have chicken pox or something," Katniss says, turning away and crossing her arms.

"Come on, Katniss," Peeta urges her. "You know we're going to have to dance." He considers advising her to choose her battles. No, that would only make her dig in her heels.

"I'll dance with Peeta," Katniss concedes. "That's it."

"No accounting for taste," Haymitch says with a shrug.

"Why must you make everything so much harder than it is?" Effie asks in exasperation.

"Hey, I was going to play along with this farce. She's the one who refused," Haymitch protests.

"I was talking to her," Effie says. It occurs to her that the question could be addressed to either of them with equal validity and usually at least four times a day. "Oh, dear," she says faintly.

"What's wrong?" Peeta asks her with a tinge of concern.

"Oh, nothing, really," Effie replies, attempting to sound calm. "I just realized that from now on my workload has doubled."

"Welcome to my world," Peeta says. "Support meetings are on alternate Tuesdays."

Katniss sketches a curtsey that vaguely resembles Effie's demonstration. "Bow," she snaps at Haymitch. "You just became the lesser evil."

"Fine, fine, just don't sit on me," Haymitch says, bowing.

"I'm not _fat_, you jackass. I'm _pregnant_," Katniss grits out as she takes the hand he offers her and puts her other hand on his shoulder. "Do I need to explain to you where babies come from?"

"You probably need to focus on this, honey. I step forward, you step back. It will be harder for you, what with not being able to see your toes."

"Is this still 'friendly' for them?" Effie asks Peeta quietly.

"I'll let you know when we need to pull them apart," Peeta says.

"Now we make it even more asinine by turning in slow circles," Haymitch instructs.

"Ow! You did that on purpose. Jackass."

"Step back and I won't step on your foot," he says slowly, as though explaining something to the village idiot.

Katniss gives a frustrated growl and stomps on Haymitch's foot, drawing a hiss from him.

"Alright, I think I've got it now," Peeta says, standing up quickly. "Mind if I cut in?"

"She's all yours," Haymitch says, stepping away. "'Til death doth you part. Good luck with that."


	27. Fire in the Woods

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Lengthy notes follow. No warnings for this chapter, so feel free to skip ahead if you like.

Note2: Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato! More rebellion stuff, you say? Read on…

I can't take all the credit for the banter. The movie 'Swan Princess', popcorn, and weird dreams kind of fell into a blender together and that was the result. I just hope it didn't come out _too_ silly.

I think the Capitolites will use any excuse for parties and dances. And there's no evidence that Panem observes any of the quasi-religious holidays (the occasional hilarious Christmas story notwithstanding!). The President's birthday is kind of their major patriotic festival, like our 4th of July.

I also think Capitolites are much more admiring of Snow than we are of Obama (or Bush, or Clinton, etc.). You'd never see Capitolites driving around in cars sporting bumper stickers that mocked their leader and any political satire like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report would never make it onto Capitol TV. I'm thinking they go in for something almost approaching the 'state religion' of North Korea, sans the all-pervading fear and the widespread deprivation.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 27**

The girl who'd started the fire had been called Winifred. She'd had curly red hair and a mother with the shut down, window-in-a-deserted house look that Katniss knows too well. She'd been sixteen, and Katniss realizes there's nothing she can possibly say. She hadn't known this lost girl, hadn't even known her name.

She looks down at the cards Effie gave her, even though they only hold the same empty platitudes as all the other cards. Like form letters. Dear Citizen, we regret to inform you that your daughter did not survive the Games. She fought bravely. Panem forever.

She's heard a dozen other Victors parrot this speech over and over throughout their respective Tours. She'd never appreciated that they didn't have a choice about it. No, she'd had to be the _brave_ one, the damn _heroine_. She'd had to get a man shot in the back of the head in order to see what everyone before her had intuitively known.

As always, Peeta has taken the 'worse of the two.' Ries was fourteen when he had his throat slit and bled to death a dozen yards or so from the Cornucopia while other kids fought and screamed and bled all around him. No matter. Peeta will read the cards. He'll look solemn, and his voice will be as compassionate as he can make it, but he'll still read the cards. At least one of them understands the rules, and isn't yet too insane to act accordingly.

Peeta would willingly have done all the talking if they'd have let him, but of course that hadn't been allowed. The Capitolites are watching, and they want their money's worth.

We ought to give the cards to Haymitch, Katniss muses, looking over to where the third Victor stands on the periphery of the stage, as far from everyone else as he can get. Maybe he'd call the Capitolites cowards again. Maybe he'd incite his very own riot. He's in his head this time; he wouldn't conveniently silence himself and render his defiance a joke by walking off the edge of the stage. If her tearful apology to a single grieving family could inspire an entire District to salute her, what might happen if a Victor stood up and told them just what kind of people their masters really are?

The Capitol is not prepared for any serious resistance. Katniss can't picture a single Capitolite she's met taking up a gun and defending their golden city. Their white-uniformed guard dogs are greatly outnumbered. She doubts there's more than one for every forty citizens even in the most heavily policed Districts like 11. Most places the ratio is probably even more lopsided. If the Districters rose against them they wouldn't stand a chance. It could all start today, right here.

She could start it. She stands silent in front of the microphone and looks out at the horde of faces as the tension builds. Most of them are visibly angry, not hiding their glares and scowls. The team from Capitol TV is here and prominently filming the ceremony, and still these people dare to glower and clench their fists as though they wait only a signal to storm the stage and tear the Peacekeepers to bits. Maybe she and her fellow Victors, too, but right now Katniss feels that that would hardly matter. A word from her, or from Haymitch, and it will begin.

She looks over at Haymitch, not caring that the silence is spinning out around her, and she waits for him to meet her eyes. He looks up and their eyes lock, and as so often happens between them her intention flashes from her mind to his fully formed and definite and unmistakable. And he shakes his head.

Katniss drops her eyes at once. She looks at the cards in her hands. She's shaking. She'd almost- She was really going to-

On the roped-off platform to her left, Winifred's family waits for whatever remarks the Victor from 12 will deliver. They look almost indifferent, just waiting for this formality to be over. Even as one camera focuses on the stage and another zooms in on Katniss and a third pans the captive audience, a fourth is aimed at Winifred's parents and her brother ready to catch any crying or swooning or TV-friendly clinging to each other. In Districts 1 and 2 it'll be grimly proud expressions and nods at each patriotic statement.

Winifred's family is giving them nothing. Good for them. All three are brunettes, so maybe Winifred was the adopted child of a dead relative or something. Or maybe this air of bored indifference is their own way of scowling and shaking their fists at the Capitol.

The anger and the sense of outrage in this district is unlike anything Katniss has ever seen before. A constant low murmuring emanates from the crowd, very much like the drone of a nest of tracker-jackers. She can't see anyone actually speaking, which makes the sound exponentially more ominous. Unbidden, the idea rises again in her mind that they're waiting for a signal.

"Katniss," Peeta says quietly, as though he hopes to evade the cameras by lowering his voice. "Read the cards."

"Citizens of District 8." Her voices skips a beat before she continues. "Greetings. Peeta and I are honored to speak to you today." Her voice falls into an inflectionless rhythm as she reads the words Effie wrote for her. "Thank you all for helping us to celebrate our victory. It was a hard-fought and exciting battle this year." She stops and looks at Peeta. _Go on_, he mouths at her. Katniss swallows back the vile taste that seems to be filling her mouth. "One of the best in the great history of the Games. We'd like to express our eternal gratitude to President Snow for his unprecedented generosity in allowing Peeta and I to emerge from the Arena together. Going on with my life without my beloved husband at my side would have been unthinkable."

That's one card done. She shuffles it to the bottom of the stack. Two more to go. "Thanks to the benevolence of the Capitol, our love will flourish forever." She scans the card. The whole thing's more rot of that sort. Why not just have a portrait of Snow set up on stage so she and Peeta could bow and light candles in front of it? She moves this card to the bottom of the pile without trying to utter any more of it.

The last card finally mentions Winifred. She straightens her shoulders and resolves to read it straight through to the end and try to ignore what it says. "We thank you for the sacrifice of your daughter Winifred, age 16."

Something big flies through her peripheral vision and Katniss snaps her head toward it as chaos takes over the stage. Fifteen feet to her left, one of the Peacekeepers is on fire. He drops to his knees and then falls onto his side, rolling around and screaming in the flames. The other nine who were arrayed along the back of the stage surge forward, but about half of them leap to their fallen comrade. Only four of them turn on the crowd, pulling out their batons. None of them have guns. They'd been meant as an honor guard for the visiting Victors, just part of the ceremony. They clearly hadn't expected any trouble.

The crowd hasn't yet stormed the stage. They roar from the ground, shouting and shaking their fists. No more than five seconds have elapsed since the Molotov cocktail struck the Peacekeeper.

Someone grabs Katniss by the collar of her shirt and drags her backwards away from the microphone. Beside her, Peeta jerks free with a sound of ripping cloth and wraps his arms around her protectively.

"Come on, you idiot!" Haymitch hisses, letting go of Katniss's shirt so he can grab them both by their arms. "Damn stupid teenagers!"

Peeta looks at him wild and uncomprehending for just a second. Then he says, "Come on, Katniss!" and grabs her other arm. The two of them drag her back, almost lifting her off her feet.

In District 8 the stage stands by itself and separate instead of doubling as the portico of the Justice Building like it does in most districts. It's an eight and a half foot drop from the back of the platform to the ground.

"You two sit down," Haymitch says, taking charge of the situation. He emphasizes the command by more or less shoving them to the stage floor before standing in front of them. "If either of you move an inch, I swear to god I'll shove _her_ off the stage."

The first four Peacekeepers have disappeared into the crowd, and the yells and cries of pain and sounds of fighting are deafening. It's a free-for-all as over four hundred people try to get at the four Peacekeepers and the Peacekeepers retaliate by brutally clubbing those closest to them, who can't avoid the blows because of all the others pressing at their backs. The burning Peacekeeper has stopped rolling around and the other five have abandoned the still burning body and are turning to join battle. Any minute now back-up will arrive- and they'll have guns.

"Haymitch, we have to get her out of here," Peeta says frantically.

"They don't want us," Haymitch snaps. "Either that, or they have spectacularly bad aim."

"Let go of me, Peeta!" Katniss yells. "We have to fight!"

"I'll push her off the goddamn stage if you let her stand up," Haymitch growls at Peeta.

Wide-eyed, Peeta tightens his hold on Katniss and braces himself as well as he can. "Please! You're pregnant! Please stay here!" he begs her.

Acquiescing, Katniss looks past Haymitch and says, "This is just so fucked up." Neither of the men replies.

They have the stage to themselves now, except for maybe the one Peacekeeper. Haymitch hopes the guy's dead by now. Not that he considers even for a second pissing on him to put out the flames, as they say.

The three Victors from 12 keep their place at the back of the stage, safely above the battle, waiting for order to be restored. Haymitch is well aware of how this looks. They could jump in and join the fight against the Peacekeepers. They'd either be killed here or taken captive and executed in the Capitol. But whichever it was, they'd become martyrs. Katniss and Peeta are the biggest celebrities in Panem right now; Haymitch knows that his is a household name, too. If they joined in a riot and died because of it the ripples from that one sacrifice might form the start of the destruction of the Capitol, the death of President Snow, and the end of the Hunger Games. Katniss is eager to fight, and Peeta will go wherever she goes.

But there's the Resistance. Plutarch has told him that when the time is right priority will be given to rescuing Katniss and Peeta above all others. Somewhere there's some sort of base they'll be taken to where they'll be safe. Undoubtedly Plutarch would tell him anything to manipulate him into doing whatever job they want from him. He used to think himself good at spotting lies, but that ability kind of collapses when the person in question has just drugged you and fucked your unconscious body and is now sipping a drink and looking at you with a species of patronizing tolerance as they issue your orders. There comes a point of extreme inequality in status where the mind just says, 'fuck it, let's pretend all of this is true because I can't do shit about it if it isn't.'

Plutarch told him the kids would be saved. He wouldn't say why they were important enough to warrant any special effort, but it could still be true.

Haymitch stands in front of the kids, watching for any further projectiles or anyone climbing onto the stage. All that matters is protecting the kids, he reminds himself. This riot has nothing to do with me.

He can see the tide turning as back-up arrives. There's a wall of Peacekeepers in riot gear pressing into the crowd, mostly clubbing people but occasionally shooting someone at point-blank range. The Districters keep fighting for almost five minutes, but in the end of course they break and run in whatever direction they can. You can't throw rocks in the middle of a crowd, still less Molotov cocktails. Many of them brought kitchen knives secreted in their clothes, but those make no more of an impression on body armor than fists do. For the most part the Peacekeepers let them run. Reprisals will come later.

Six of the Peacekeepers climb up onto the stage to take custody of the Victors. "Stand up," one of them orders Katniss and Peeta. "Stand apart, all of you!"

The kids stand up as Haymitch steps away from them. Peeta keeps one arm around Katniss, the other hand raised in surrender. "We won't give you any trouble," he says, hoping Katniss will stay quiet.

"Stand apart!" the Peacekeeper barks again. His face is indiscernible behind its shatter-proof shield, but Haymitch can read his body language just fine. He looks twitchy.

"Do it, Peeta," he says, his voice causing one of the guards flanking him to turn towards him menacingly.

"Get off," Katniss says, shrugging out from under Peeta's arm. Peeta looks at her and then reluctantly steps away.

Haymitch lets his breath out in an involuntary sigh, relaxing fractionally. These two probably won't even last long enough to be rescued by the Resistance. Damn stupid teenagers.


	28. A Practical System

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, Hannahleep123! And, as always, thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato!

Note 2: Slight warnings for this one. Kind of a heavy PG-13 thing, I guess. Snow's mind is a dark and seriously screwed up place.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 28**

Late afternoon sunlight slants through the windows of the solarium and floods the room with soft golden radiance. A grandfather clock, hand-painted with gold metallic vines running up the sides, ticks solemnly. A fire burns in the hearth even as the air conditioning blows a pleasantly cool current through the room. When he has a problem to think through, Snow often finds it helpful to watch the flames. A large tank of tropical fish is set into one of the walls, for the benefit of guests. Supposedly watching the fish flit about their glass cage is calming for many among the upper classes. For Snow it will always be the flames.

Currently the problem foremost in his mind is what to do about Haymitch. That's not his biggest problem, of course. Would that the disposal of a single troublesome Victor were his biggest problem, or even in the top five. As the ruler of Panem he knows he'll never be able to clear his desk, metaphorically speaking. And in addition to the usual myriad issues requiring his attention, there are the recent problems in a few of the districts. There's been a riot in 8, work slow-downs in 8 and 3, and five incidents of suspected equipment sabotage in 7. So far it's nothing that the Peacekeepers can't handle locally. But it bears watching, especially since such a cluster of events has never before occurred all in the space of a few weeks like this.

On top of that, there've been three disappearances in the Capitol over the last six months, most recently the young woman slated to take over as District 7's Escort. Where could they have gone? If they've been killed, who could have done it? And why? The Capitol Guard has yet to turn up a single lead on any of them. It's a mystery, and mysteries are anathema to the efficient governing of a nation.

Those are the things he should be focusing on, but the problem of Haymitch worries at his consciousness as persistently and maddeningly as a grain of sand in his eye. He'll have to attend to it before he can handle the weightier issues. How useful it would be to have capable subordinates he could delegate this to. But most of those under him are fools, are the rest are overly ambitious. No significant decision can be trusted to any of them.

It's tempting to let the Peacekeepers inflict the same punishment they would on any ordinary citizen who had committed the same crime. Perhaps two broken wrists and a broken ankle would finally be enough to bring Haymitch under control. At the least, it should render him harmless for the next year or so.

But then he would also be useless for the purposes of the List.

Katniss and Peeta would no doubt make up the lost income, and then some. Katniss would have to be held back until she'd given birth, but after that there should be no problem. There are very effective drugs to stop lactation and speed weight loss. She could be ready five months from now. And Peeta could begin whenever it pleases Snow to offer him.

Snow savors the idea for several minutes: Haymitch disabled to the point where he couldn't even feed himself, completely broken and humiliated, under the attentive 'care' of a few hand-picked minders; Katniss and Peeta on the List, servicing whoever Snow sent them to, doing their part to fill the royal coffers and perpetuate the Capitolite belief that Districters are as promiscuous as rabbits and enjoy sex with their natural superiors.

It paints a compelling picture, but one he sets aside with a confused and frustrated shake of his head. Somehow it doesn't _completely_ satisfy. Without knowing why, he can feel that it's not the best possible solution.

Perhaps even that would not stifle Haymitch completely. Snow thinks the man may be within a couple of months of going insane. A dog can be pushed only so far before one of two things happens: it breaks so completely that it becomes a useless cringing thing that crouches belly-to-the-floor and won't move without being dragged by a leash; or it turns and mindlessly attacks whoever is closest to it, and keeps on attacking until someone puts a bullet through its head.

There's no good reason for Haymitch to be nearing such a state. Nothing's been done to him that hasn't been done to dozens of others without any significant problems arising.

There'd been just one incident, twenty years ago. A female Victor in her mid-thirties had successfully drowned herself after killing her two children by crushing sleeping tablets into their food. Snow believes she was from District 4, but he could have just gotten that idea from the method she chose. The List has taken forty Victors to date- all save four of those crowned since Snow came to power. To have only lost one in all that time testifies to the practicality of the system. It works. For almost all of them, it works very well.

Perhaps Haymitch has some congenital abnormality in his brain that makes him less able to tolerate routine stressors. Perhaps he's just weak-minded.

If pain and disability and the attentions of his minders failed to bring him fully in line, or if he went insane, he could always be put down later. And insanity would have the added benefit of letting his dear 'children' see what he'd been reduced to before he was put down.

Snow turns the idea over dutifully, trying to bring himself to like it. For maximum psychological impact on Haymitch and on the other two it could hardly be improved upon. But…

He wants Haymitch dead. There it is, stated simply. He doesn't want him squirreled away in 12 for the next decade or so, even if he never again does anything but drink himself into senility. He doesn't even want to kill him a few months from now, when he's too far gone to recognize his approaching death. And it's not even about the silly prep team, replaceable nobodies that they are. For no reason he can put into words, in the last few days he's begun to want Haymitch permanently and decisively out of the way. It feels like the right thing to do.

A soft musical chime sounds, and Snow taps the button on the remote to give the slave permission to enter the solarium. A uniformed Avox slips through the door and shuts it gently behind herself before presenting a tray with a sheet of thick gray-blue stationary folded on it. The letter bears a wax seal the color of ebony that Snow recognizes even before the light reflects off it and reveals the initials PH. He dismisses the Avox with a wave of his hand and breaks the seal.

Written to President Coriolanus Snow, with deepest reverence:

I have heard of what happened in 12. The prep team has not been as discreet as you perhaps hoped. Allow me to present a suggestion on what you might wish to do about Haymitch Abernathy. Long-term disability of such a popular Victor would be detrimental to the interests of Panem, as I'm sure you've considered. I know of a certain individual, Bacchus by name (no surname), who enjoys rougher sport than is usually permitted with the Victors. Permanent effects could be achieved without impairing the ability to perform. Matters could even be so arranged that Katniss and Peeta were privy to the details. Bacchus is well able to pay the usual price and might easily be persuaded to offer a bit more, as his previous requests for Victors have always been denied.

With profound respect, your friend, Plutarch Heavensbee

Snow idly drops the letter into the fire, as he does with all personal correspondence. It's sensible advice. Plutarch always gives sensible advice.

Perhaps he is over-reacting. Haymitch has been behaving himself very well ever since Thread whipped him. And Katniss and Peeta are a unique opportunity: a Victor couple brought together by the Games, and soon-to-be proven breeders. It might be more profitable to preserve them in that role. One baby is just the beginning of what could be gained from such a union. There are families in the districts with as many as nine.

There's been an undercurrent of giddy excitement in the city ever since the pregnancy was announced, and parties on the scheduled delivery date are expected to resemble the annual pre-Games parties in number and lavishness.

Yes, further children would certainly be desirable. One day at least one of them will go into the Arena. In another a talent for singing might be 'discovered'. A child of such origin would make a popular entertainment at Capitol functions. Even those who were allowed to grow up in 12, marry, go into the mines, and lead ordinary lives would serve the Capitol in their turn. Grandchildren of Katniss and Peeta would still make noteworthy Tributes. It's too rare an opportunity to discard on a whim.

None of those three Victors will ever be threats, anyway. Haymitch's cooperation is guaranteed by Katniss and Peeta, and theirs will be guaranteed by their offspring.

Ignoring the lingering vestiges of doubt, Snow slides open a drawer and takes out a sheet of his own ivory-colored stationary.

Plutarch-

Inform Bacchus that he may call on me in my office this Thursday between the hours of 1500 and 1600.

He seals the missive with scarlet wax stamped with his own initials, as the official seal is used only for matters of state. Summoning an Avox, he gives directions on where it should be delivered.

For the next hour Snow walks the paths of his rose gardens and contemplates the desirable meaning of the phrase 'permanent effects.'


	29. Through the Trees

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 29**

The next day in District 7, Katniss and Peeta read their speeches to an almost empty town square. The only audience present is the families of the dead Tributes, isolated on their platforms. Shots of crowds will be edited in later from footage taken in other districts. They finish the performance by clasping each other's hands and declaring their undying allegiance to Panem. Katniss wishes she'd never taken Peeta's hand during the Tribute Parade. They'll have them doing this for the next thirty years, now. Peeta was right: the Capitolites love it.

They stand there frozen and grinning with their hands in the air until Eustace says, "And scene!" in his self-aggrandizing manner.

"Bravo," Johanna says, slowly clapping. "At first I thought you weren't going to talk about anything except how crazy in love you two are. You sounded like you might break into song at any minute. Well, I'm not dressed for dancing but we'd have given it a whirl, right, Haymitch?"

"In honor of their eternal love," Haymitch agrees. "It would have been beautiful."

"Haymitch, you're embarrassing them," Effie scolds.

"Don't be so jealous, Effie," Haymitch scoffs. "I'm sure one of our noble guards would have danced with you." To Johanna he adds, "Gods, she's possessive. I may suffocate."

If Effie's blushing, you can't see it under her thick ivory make-up. Maybe that's why she almost always wears that stuff. It's part of the necessary protective gear for anyone who has to attend public functions with Haymitch.

"We didn't write the speeches," Peeta states for the record. Then he notices Effie looking at him in a rather hurt way and lapses into silence, trapped between complimenting the speeches and pissing Katniss off or letting the statement stand and upsetting their characteristically high-strung Escort.

"Both of your Tributes died in the Bloodbath this year, didn't they?" Haymitch points out. "Not a whole lot to say about either of them, was there?"

"So right," Johanna agrees carelessly. "I barely recall their names. Poor Haymitch, trapped in that Control Room for eighteen days. You missed out on some really _killer_ final five parties."

"Yeah, well, kids are such needy little buggers," Haymitch says, looking mockingly at Katniss and Peeta. "Come over and babysit some time."

"Don't we have to get back to the train?" Katniss asks Effie, ignoring the two of them as well as she can.

"No, we're all going hiking," Johanna answers for Effie. "Me and you two and Haymitch and the scary pink lady that follows Haymitch everywhere and a dozen or so well-armed Peacekeepers and the TV crew." She takes a deep breath. "Did I leave anyone out?" she asks the Peacekeepers, smiling brightly. "Is that everyone? Or will we have yet _more_ guests along for our hike?" There's an edge to her frenetically polite tone, as though she might erupt into a screaming, stomping fit at the least provocation.

"We're going to tour some of the forests where the citizens of District 7 harvest lumber," Effie says, still trying to recover from being called a 'scary pink lady'. She looks over at the TV crew who has been filming every second of this less-than-stellar meeting. She'll have to talk to Eustace later. Surely he'll edit that part out. Why did the tour have to be here, of all districts? And out of four Victors, why would they send Johanna?

"Oh, goody," Katniss says, slumping and crossing her arms in a sullen and thoroughly unattractive way.

"We'll have a friggin' marvelous time," Johanna puts forth in her aggressively cheerful voice.

"Aw, she's just cranky," Haymitch teases. "It's past her bedtime."

"Good joke, Haymitch," Peeta says, actually smiling as if he finds the insults funny. "Time to move on before you overdo it."

"Hmm, maybe I'll dance with _him_," Johanna says, looking between Haymitch and Peeta.

"We do have a schedule to keep," Effie breaks in, giving up on waiting for a proper lull in the conversation. Maybe they'll just cut this meeting out altogether when they edit the film. She's pretty sure the only entirely usable sentence was one of hers.

Johanna leads the way down a well-marked path that takes them ever deeper into the forest. At Eustace's direction Katniss and Peeta follow directly behind her, then Haymitch and Effie. The Peacekeepers walk all around them, weaving in and out of the trees at the sides of the path. Glancing back, Peeta sees that Effie is resting her hand on Haymitch's arm as she picks her way along the path in her usual stilettos. He looks questioningly at Katniss. Katniss is wearing heels, too, though they're not nearly as high or as pointy as Effie's. He offers her his arm and is surprised when she takes it immediately. Well, she's not used to heels and she's more than five months pregnant. He should have offered straight away. He pats her hand apologetically and walks on, adding this to the file of things he'll do better in the future.

Johanna points out trees as they walk, names them and recites their major uses. Sometimes she adds an extra comment that isn't part of the prearranged program: "The tree most likely to crush loggers!," or "The favorite wood of tree spiders!" They come to a grove of mahogany, and Effie perks up and looks around interestedly.

Haymitch lifts her hand from his arm and says, "Wait here, Princess. Only be a second."

"Haymitch, what are you doing?" Effie asks, watching with great trepidation as he steps off the trail.

"Please remain on the path," the nearest Peacekeeper commands, stepping in front of him. The rest of the party has turned around to watch.

"At ease, chief," Haymitch drawls, stepping around the Peacekeeper.

The Peacekeeper looks surprised for a second. Then he turns and takes hold of Haymitch's arm. "Back to the path."

"Get the fuck off me," Haymitch snaps in a suddenly furious snarl. He shakes the startled Peacekeeper off. Then he takes a calming breath and shrugs and smiles, flipping back to easy-going with the speed of a schizophrenic. "Bit of a germ phobia, chief. So- don't touch, yeah?"

The Peacekeeper is at a loss. Haymitch is a famous Victor from another district, he's a notorious drunk who is actually celebrated for his outlandish behavior, and Capitol TV is busily filming this. He wishes he'd let someone else intercept this guy, or that they'd at least turn off the cameras for a minute.

Meanwhile, Haymitch casually digs his fingers into the nearest tree and pries off a palm-sized piece of bark. He dusts it off on his shirt in unhurried motions. Then he sketches a salute to the Peacekeeper and steps back onto the path.

"A souvenir from our tour of District 7," he says, presenting the bark to Effie.

Effie accepts it knowing full-well she shouldn't. She shouldn't encourage this sort of behavior in any way. Independent of her better sense, she smiles at him more genuinely than she has yet smiled on the whole tour and says, "Thank you."

"I'll carry it for you," he says, taking it back and dropping it into his jacket pocket. He offers her his arm again with a grave courtesy that is undermined by the laughter in his eyes and completely destroyed by the smug look he gives the moron who got in his way.

"Oh gods, _you're_ not going to start singing, are you?" Johanna calls back. "Think of the children!"

"Young lady-" Effie begins in her most forbidding tone.

"Easy there, Princess," Haymitch chuckles. "Johanna fights with an axe. You don't want any of that."

Peeta gives up on trying to keep track of the fluctuating level of danger involved in this outing. It's like a field-trip sponsored by the local lunatic asylum. With his free hand he pinches his arm, just to make sure.

"No, you're awake," Katniss says in an undertone. "I see them, too."

Having resumed walking, they come quite suddenly to a break in the surrounding forest. For as far as the eye can see in front of them, the trees are arranged in neat rows and there isn't one of them that's over five feet tall. Those nearest them are closer to two feet tall and surrounded by mounds of fresh dirt.

"Welcome to Section 34," Johanna announces flatly. "The oldest trees in this section are five years old." She points woodenly off into the distance. "No trees will be cut here for another twenty-five years. We begin harvesting a new section every three years and simultaneously begin re-planting the appropriate section. It is an intricate and ingenious system that will provide Panem with a steady supply of lumber for millennia. And President Snow will be there to keep it running smoothly century after century, because he's immortal. He may be a vampire. Or maybe they clone him and replace as needed. A series of conveniently placed cardboard cut-outs and some talented ventriloquists? No one really knows."

The Capitol TV people have belatedly lowered their cameras, muttering and shifting uneasily. Eustace laughs shrilly. Effie doesn't react in any way the cameras could catch, but her fingers tighten on Haymitch's arm.

"What?" Johanna says, animation coming back into her voice. "That was usable, wasn't it? Do you want to do another take?"

"Surprise!" Effie announces loudly, turning a sparkling smile on Katniss and Peeta. "You two get to plant your very own tree! Isn't that special?"

"Cool," Katniss says, having a go at sounding excited.

"Yeah, awesome," Peeta says, smiling at the cameras.

"As a matter of _fact_," Johanna says in a near-perfect imitation of Effie, "we have _two_ super special seedlings for you to plant!" She drops the falsely bright voice with a grimace as though it hurt her throat. "It was going to be one for Peeta and one for Katniss. But since Haymitch damaged one of our trees earlier, I think he should plant one. Assuming you two don't mind sharing," she says to Katniss and Peeta, not making it a question.

"Germ phobia. Really can't play in the dirt," Haymitch demurs.

"The holes are already dug. Just set the seedlings in them and scoop the dirt back in around the roots. It would be literally impossible for you to mess this up badly enough to kill someone. Totally murder-free recreation for you here, Haymitch. How often do you find that?"

"The axe-murderer makes a compelling argument," Haymitch says thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have to handle a shovel?"

"I wouldn't let you handle a shovel," Johanna reassures him.

"Well, alright then."

The Capitol TV people crowd around, their momentary unease forgotten as they try to find the best angles. The three Victors from 12 drop to their knees in front of the holes. Cameras flash incessantly as they go about the five minute job of packing dirt around the roots of the pine seedlings. Enough pictures are taken to compose a whole commemorative album of the occasion, or at least a coffee table book.


	30. Ten Foot Perimeter

Note: No warnings, feel free to skip ahead.

Note2: Thanks for the follows, Simbioza and Aranwyn Nina Song!

Note3: Thank you, Bella184ever! Characters are the most important part of any narrative, and I'm always glad to hear I'm doing alright with them.

Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato! Yes, it was an act. And as to your comment on cleverness, I say: Pish posh, darling! Some of your stories are to die for.

Thanks, Simbioza! I hope it continues to go in such a direction. Johanna practically writes herself. I kept expecting to catch a glimpse of her standing behind my chair, rolling her eyes, one hand resting almost casually on the handle of an axe…

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 30**

Portraits of President Snow are ubiquitous in District 1. His gimlet eyes and close-lipped smile peer down from the side of every large building, blown up to monumental proportions. Not all of them are the same style. There are photographs, realist oil paintings, black ink drawings, and soft-edged watercolors; all of them replicated onto 9'x12' banners. In every representation Snow's expression is exactly the same. Beneath each representation is the fore-shortened motto 'Panem Forever'.

The School for Victors is located in a large and impressive building right on the edge of the square, straight across from the Justice Building. Before the ceremony in District 1 it is customary for the new Victor to visit the elite school for a question-and-answer session with the 35-40 students.

"This is one of the most exclusive schools in all of Panem," Effie tells them all as their car approaches the square. "Entrance is by the most vigorous of physical and mental examinations. Each year in the month following the Games they select the ten most promising eleven-year-olds in the whole district to begin their training program." Her voice brims with cheerful enthusiasm as she eyes the school. Now this is the true spirit of the Games. These people understand what it's all about.

Only Districts 1 and 2 are allowed these schools, the enduring reward for the parties of loyalists present in them during the Dark Days. These courageous men and women had stayed true to the young Capitol when all those around them would have destroyed her and let anarchy and lawlessness reign. And, thank goodness, they had been numerous enough to play a vital role in preventing that calamity. To be the Escort for one of these Districts would be the pinnacle of her career. It's what every would-be Escort aspires to from the very moment they're accepted into the Games Academy.

It's disturbing to Effie that she's not sure she aspires to that anymore. Certainly she wouldn't turn down such a position if it were offered. That would be a foolish thing to do even if she loved working with District 12. Letting it become known that you don't enjoy all the proper activities and embrace all the proper ideas and attitudes is as sure a way to lose your position as getting careless about your appearance. The standards for Escorts are very high. As they should be.

So it is her carefully guarded secret that she's become increasingly convinced she would not mind at all if the crown jewels never came her way. The very thought makes her uneasy, engendering an innate sense of wrongness. She tries not to let herself examine such notions too closely.

And then of course there are moments with Haymitch that make her quite certain that she's fallen victim to Stockholm syndrome.

"Got a bit of drool, there," he taunts her lazily, and Peeta hides his smile behind his hand and Katniss doesn't bother. Effie huffs and turns away to resume looking out the window. One day _this_ will be her district, and as soon as her poor wrecked nerves recover sufficiently she will send the biggest sympathy basket she can find to whatever luckless girl replaces her. Drool indeed.

"What are they going to ask us?" Katniss asks.

"I imagine it will be the usual interview fare: how you first met, when you fell in love, whether you're hoping for a boy or a girl; that sort of thing," Effie says airily.

Haymitch laughs. "Oh, Princess…"

"What's so funny?" Effie asks sharply.

"Nothing," he says, waving a hand. The car comes to a stop before anything else can be said and all three victors lean forward a little in readiness. The situation's about to change, and given how the Tour has gone so far none of them can feel relaxed about that. Effie smoothes her skirt and smiles. The door is opened and they warily step out.

A boy of twelve waits for them in front of the school's marble columns. "Welcome to the School for Victors," he begins as soon as they're out of the car. It's just the four of them. For the first time during the tour they're without any guards. Even in District 2 a pair of Peacekeepers in dress uniforms followed them everywhere.

The film crew isn't present, either. They're already in the Justice Building, setting up for the ceremony. The Q and A at the school is the only Tour event that's closed to the press.

"My name is Topaz, and I'm an ascending second year. It is my privilege to escort our distinguished guests to the auditorium. Come this way." He turns and leads them into the building, his proud bearing comically at odds with the hyper springiness in his step. They follow without comment. Even Effie is silent, being unsure of whether she should address her compliments to a child.

Topaz leads them into a long, narrow room. Weapons are mounted all around on the walls, each identified by an engraved plaque. There're multiple swords, axes, cudgels, and maces. Interspersed with these larger weapons is an occasional dagger or set of throwing knives.

"These are the weapons used in the Arena by every past Victor from District 1," Topaz informs them. "As you can see, most of our Victors specialize in bladed weapons. All students at our school engage in parallel training with three different weapons starting in their fifth year."

Haymitch reaches out and runs his fingers meditatively down the side of a highly polished axe blade. The metal reflects his tattoos back at him almost as clearly as a mirror.

"Take it down if you like," Topaz invites, clearly pleased with his interest.

Haymitch turns his hand so the glitter flashes in the surface of the blade and sends sparkles of light dancing across the room. He runs his thumb all the way down the edge of the blade, slicing it open at the first touch. "Weren't you supposed to take us to the auditorium?" he asks.

"I have one more thing to show you first," Topaz says. "Do you require medical attention?"

"Get on with it."

They walk down another hall, turn a corner, and find themselves under the regard of yet another of the huge likenesses of Snow. This time it's a photo-mosaic.

"This portrait of President Snow is made up of 20,000 stills taken from the Games, starting with the 50th and going up to the 74th. A similar mosaic celebrating the 25th through the 49th is on display in the Capitol's Institute of Art, though that one of course is a dual portrait of the current and the former Presidents. You're just in time to see this one before it joins the first. There's a very good picture of Katniss high up on the left cheek, if you look closely. Peeta, there's one of you above the President's hand. There are several others, of course."

The mosaic is very skillfully done. From ten feet away all one would see is Snow smiling his vulpine smile. Katniss decides this is a piece of art that would do best with a velvet rope forming a ten foot perimeter around it and signs forbidding closer approach. Now that the boy has pointed it out, it's impossible not to see her own image in Snow's face, one of literally thousands of kids engulfed and lost in the visage of an omnipotent monster. It's an homage to the powerlessness of the districts. Even its deceptiveness, the veneer of banality that doesn't melt away until you lean in and really _look_, is symbolic. Whoever created this was a genius. Katniss wonders if they're still alive, and how they might have met their end. She notices their guide doesn't mention the artist's name.

"There I am," Haymitch says in a satisfied tone. "Part of the beard, see?" He reaches out and taps the tiny picture, leaving a bright red thumbprint. "I'd rather expected to be under the President's hand, though." He brightens suddenly. "Maybe I'm there, too!" And he reaches for that section of the picture.

"Haymitch!" Effie cries in unfeigned dismay. She grabs his wrist before he can further deface the priceless work of art. "We're so sorry!" she exclaims to Topaz, for lack of anyone else to apologize to. "Haymitch, that was _bad_! Very _bad_!"

"He's not a dog, Effie," Katniss snaps angrily.

"Let's all calm down," Peeta insists in his quiet voice. "Haymitch is drunk. He didn't mean to mess up the picture. And I'm sure you can replace that one little spot with other pictures easily enough. No harm done."

"Or leave it," Haymitch suggests. "Red goes well with him, doesn't it, Effie? Something about him just says 'red' to me."

"_Bad_," Effie hisses, heedless of Katniss's glare.

Topaz actually might cry. He's very pale as he leans close to the mosaic and looks at the ruined spot right in the middle of Snow's beard. "Uh… um…" He turns wide, brimming eyes on Haymitch. "Why…"

"Tell you when you're older," Haymitch tells him with a smile.

"Topaz," Peeta says, and waits for the kid to look at him. "Don't worry about it. We'll make sure they know it wasn't your fault." He gives the boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Why don't you take us to the auditorium now?"

"Okay," Topaz agrees dazedly. He turns and walks from the room. The guided tour portion of the visit is over.

In the auditorium one of the instructors takes charge of the group. Liberated, Topaz almost runs to the back of the audience to sit with the other twelve year olds. Haymitch and Effie are ushered to seats in the center of the front row, while Katniss and Peeta are directed to a pair of cushioned chairs positioned behind a table with a blue brocade covering.

"Okay, students," the teacher announces in a practiced voice that carries throughout the room. "Let's be efficient. Time is short. First question."

A boy stands up in the seventeen section. "Katniss, please describe in detail how a tracker jacker sting feels and the what the associated short-term psychosis is like."

Katniss lets her mind venture back for a moment and then willingly begins to describe the sensation. After all, it's been six months since anyone outside of 12 asked her a question she could answer honestly.


	31. Distractions

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: I've borrowed a line from _Frasier_ that I'm sure will yet make its way into mainstream vernacular. In the meantime, no copyright infringement is intended.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 31**

Peeta's latest campaign to distract Haymitch from the approaching torture/long-term disability involves chess.

It's pretty much doomed from the start. The chess set the Capitol attendants procure for them is nymph-themed. Looking at it and trying to avoid looking at Haymitch's expression, Peeta experiences a sudden mad urge to set it on fire and fling it off the balcony. Such urges have been presenting themselves a lot lately to his once fairly well-ordered mind, and that worries him. But there are just so many things that worry him more at this particular moment.

"Which ones are the black pieces?" Haymitch asks after a very long period of heavy silence.

"Um," Peeta says. He picks up one of the chessmen at random and gives it a determined look. It appears to be carved out of light blue marble with swirls of white. Okay, that's a start. The other available color is light green, also swirled with white.

"There are no black pieces," Katniss says, coming up behind Peeta. She smirks as she looks down at the set. "Leaf fairies or water fairies, Haymitch?"

"They're nymphs," Peeta says quickly, as though he imagines that distinction will help. "Wood nymphs and sea nymphs."

Haymitch wishes the boy would just lay off him. All he really feels like doing, all he's felt like doing this whole damn Tour, is lying in bed with a bottle of liquor to swig from whenever his mind starts getting too active. He looks up at Peeta and catches the too-familiar careful, not-quite-hopeful look.

Dropping his eyes he mutters, "I'll take the leaf fairies," and begins setting up his side of the board.

Peeta is not coming within ten feet of him after they- do what they're going to do. That won't be like the flogging. It'll hurt. He closes him eyes for a second, forces himself to take a slow, steadying breath. It'll hurt like holy fucking blood-soaked hell. An involuntary shudder racks his body, and out of the corner of his eye he notices Peeta noticing and looking concerned. Concern is worthless; concern isn't going to keep them from breaking his wrists. Peeta and his goddamn concern can just go take a flying fuck off the nearest cliff.

But he can deal with pain. That's one of the things liquor was made for. What they're going to do this time won't lay him out like the whipping did. It won't make him a helpless wreck that can barely move.

Peeta moves one of his pawns forward a single space. Katniss sits down in the chair next to him to watch the game. She figures she has about ninety minutes before her prep team arrives. By that time Peeta will have won the first game and they'll be well into the second. Peeta's father played chess with him almost every night for like ten years or something. There's a good chance her husband even taught Haymitch this game. He'd certainly done his best to get her interested in it before finally surrendering to her lack of patience for such useless pastimes.

Watching them and knowing the inevitable outcome, she could almost feel guilty for not giving Peeta any choice in chess partners. Haymitch is too stubborn to let anyone else have the final say in anything. So they'll just keep playing game after game until Peeta gets tired enough to forfeit or until Haymitch wins one.

Haymitch is just reaching out to push one of his pieces forward when a burst of loud music crashes through the quiet of the Penthouse. Almost all of the wood nymphs scatter across the table and onto the floor, leaving a lone pawn guarding the now absent king's rook.

"What the hell was that?" Haymitch demands. They all look around, but nothing has moved. A moment passes as they keep still as startled rabbits, only their eyes moving. Then Haymitch scoops his fallen king off the floor and sets it back on its square. "Bet it had something to do with Effie, whatever it was." He looks from the board to the rest of the scattered pieces. Then he spins the board around. "You be green this time."

"Right," Peeta says resignedly. It was a long shot getting Haymitch to play with this set at all. He's not going to push it, not unless Katniss makes an issue of it. She often does, just for the sake of raking up a good fight. This time Katniss just rolls her eyes and looks amused, so he begins gathering up the green pieces and setting them to rights.

The music sounds again, and Effie comes hurrying into the common room. "Could none of you answer the door?" she says in passing.

"That was a doorbell?" Katniss asks.

Effie opens the door and exclaims, "Welcome, welcome! Do come in." Not that she's ever seen him before, but if the Capitol Guard let him in he must have business here.

Haymitch stands up. "You two go to your room," he says. His eyes are locked on the figure in the doorway.

"Who is it?" Katniss asks him, and tension flows between the two of them like lightening through water.

"Thank you very much, Euphemia," Balthamos replies, stepping forward into the room. Seeing Haymitch, he smiles. "Come along, Haymitch. You have an appointment to keep."

The kids already know. And Effie sure as hell knows. This shouldn't matter. But going to him like this, willingly coming at his command while they look on… Well, this ought to really drive it home.

"Did you bring your leash and muzzle, Balthamos?" he asks.

"If you need them," Balthamos returns casually. "I also have something else, to put you in the right frame of mind before we leave. If you need it."

"You can't do that," Peeta says in a hard voice. "Not here."

"Shut the hell up," Haymitch tells him. Katniss is looking at the floor, and if he could see her expression he'd see her trying to disengage. Damn them both. "Just checking," he says to Balthamos, obediently crossing the room. "I'd just _hate_ it if I bit someone and you got in trouble."

"He'll be back in time for the ball, won't he?" Effie asks worriedly.

"I'm afraid not, Euphemia," Balthamos replies courteously. "The ball's really for those two, isn't it? He should get back around the same time you do."

"Wait," Peeta says, stepping forward.

"_Euphemia_," Haymitch says in a poisonously sweet tone. "Be a dear and quiet the kid down, will you?"

"Good evening to you all," Balthamos says, sweeping the door open. With a feeling almost of gratitude, Haymitch follows him out of the apartment.

"Good evening," Effie replies in a vaguely uncertain tone. She looks at the closed door, and for a moment she feels almost stricken. She shakes her head and fixes her smile back in place. She's become too used to having to watch him at social functions; that's all it is. Having that burden suddenly lifted off her shoulders on such an important day as this has her just a little off-balance

Sometimes she almost suspects she likes that burden.


	32. Bacchus: Revel

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the favorite, Singtress! And thanks for your too-kind comments, TheOnlyPotato! Effie's still safely cocooned in denial. We all have our defense mechanisms.

Warnings: This chapter contains non-con and torture. If you are too young for such material, please do not read this chapter. Perhaps I take too great a risk posting this here, but I dislike splitting chapters between two sites as I did once before. I'd switch Wenceslas's chapter back to ff. net if I thought it safe to do so. Maybe if this chapter survives here I'll try it. Anyway, this one is just as dark as that one if not more so. If you're going to be offended or upset by the dark stuff, please hit the 'back' button now. And if this story does get taken down, I'll move the whole thing to 'archive of our own'. But I hope it doesn't.

Note2: This chapter could also have been entitled 'Bacchus: _Part 1_'.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 32**

"This is your stop, Mr. Abernathy," the chauffeur announces, pulling the ridiculous canary-colored car up to the curb.

"What, this?" Haymitch stares out of the tinted window. "I think your GPS screwed you over this time, Jeeves."

Instead of a posh hotel with statues and fountains cluttered around the front of it, the car has stopped in front of a dark, single-story building. Absolutely no light shines through any of the windows. A sign slants at a 45 degree angle over the narrow door, bearing the unlikely name 'Walrus'. That's Capitolites for you. It's getting so they think they can just stick '-us' after any random conglomeration of letters and call it a name. _Walrus_. Haymitch rolls his eyes.

The chauffeur opens the door and Haymitch steps out onto the sidewalk, eyeing the building. Maybe it really is deserted. That'd be a laugh. He knows it's not going to be that easy (nothing ever is), but the thought calls a slight smile to his lips.

"I'll return for you in three hours," the chauffeur intones.

"Yeah, yeah." Haymitch waves a hand at him dismissively. "What room number?"

"Just go inside, Mr. Abernathy. They'll be expecting you."

Turns out the windows are painted over. If it's a dive bar (that seems most likely, with such an underwhelming exterior), that's a damn odd choice. Who would go into a place with black-painted windows to get drunk?

Stepping through the door, Haymitch looks around quickly. Gentlemen's club. He's never been in one before, but the phrase comes to mind immediately. There are brown leather armchairs grouped around two fireplaces, huge crystal chandeliers dangle precariously overhead, and one wall is occupied by a gleaming mahogany bar lined with stools. A pool table waits in one corner, and another corner is dominated by a large lighted table to which Haymitch can't match a purpose. There are maybe a dozen men in the room, all of whom turn interested looks on the interloper in their private realm.

The bartender looks up briefly, appraising him. "Sit down," he invites. "Bacchus will be here directly."

For one last moment, Haymitch holds onto the illusory security of staying on his feet and near the door. Most of the men have returned to their conversations. From all sides they dart glances at him that he feels like tingling itch, like bugs crawling over his skin. These men are too sophisticated and much too important to care about the celebrity who has appeared in their midst. And in any case, he's here at another man's invitation. No, it wouldn't do to be caught looking.

Haymitch takes one of the bar stools and looks hungrily at the bottles lined up on the shelves. He's had his ration for the day, several times over. But they have absinthe. He doesn't have a built-up tolerance for absinthe yet. That stuff is _strong_. If he can just have one shot of that, tonight won't be so bad.

But he'd be past maintenance level (he's been past that since mid-afternoon), past comfortably numb; out and out drunk. The john would see it, couldn't miss it. The kids are right here in the Capitol tonight. They wouldn't take Katniss, not while she looks like she swallowed a watermelon whole. But they could bring Peeta here right after the dance.

Yeah, got to protect Peeta. Brave, noble St. Peeta, who'd told Balthamos he couldn't torture Haymitch _in_ _the Penthouse_, not in front of his precious _Katniss_. Goddamn him. He has no idea what this is like. He doesn't know shit. To give the boy his due, he's a sight better than Effie.

He'll get the wand after the john's finished with him tonight. Balthamos is touchy about 'disrespectful behavior.' It's going to be bad. He gets it before appointments sometimes, just once and just for fifteen or twenty seconds- what Balthamos calls a 'quick correction'. The fact that he's waiting until after the performance means it's going to be the kind of session that will leave him shaking and confused for hours.

"You want a drink?" the bartender interrupts his musings. "I'll put it on his tab."

"I've got money," Haymitch says. He takes out his wallet and selects a bill that should cover a drink even in this place. "Absinthe," he hears himself order. The bartender takes down the green-tinted bottle and sets a gleaming shot glass on the bar. The bar glass has a drawing of a hideous-looking animal on it- a mostly shapeless mound of flesh with no legs, stubby arms, and two enormous fangs. It'll be a mutt from one of the Games. No natural animal could have teeth like that.

"Make it red wine," he says, looking moodily at the mutt.

"Suit yourself." The bartender shrugs and returns the green bottle to its place. The wine glass that appears in front of him has the same fanged blob on it. It doesn't look like it could move very fast. Probably a water monster, something the kids wouldn't see until it exploded up from under them.

"_Chomp_," Haymitch says very quietly. The bartender follows his gaze, raises an eyebrow and pours his wine without comment.

A newcomer swings open the door of the club and heads straight for the bar. "Sorry I'm late! But this was very short notice, you know!" he declares, taking the stool next to Haymitch. "Has he been behaving himself?" he asks the bartender jokingly.

Bacchus looks older, maybe mid or late fifties. He has gray-green curly hair, styled in a 'wind strewn' look that's clearly straight out of a salon. Not a single strand of it changes position relative to the rest as he crosses the room. Magical, Haymitch thinks sardonically. He wonders how his new pal would react if he reaches out and pats that hair, just to see how hard it is. Bacchus's long beard, also gray-green and curly, nearly obscures his broad grin.

"He's fine. It's you I worry about," the bartender jokes back.

Bacchus laughs heartily. "Give me a glass of whatever he's having, and I'll leave your fine establishment standing for another night." He swivels on his stool, the better to take a good look at his new purchase. "So, you're Haymitch. You mind if I…?" He reaches out a rather pudgy hand and tucks Haymitch's hair behind his right ear so the line of diamonds catches the light. Bacchus blows out a loud breath, and then grins hugely. "Gods, you're beautiful."

"Yeah. Thanks," Haymitch says, turning his face down to his wine so Bacchus won't see him rolling his eyes. He tilts his head to the right, but his hair stays tucked. There's no subtle way to hide his ear again.

"So, what's a nice dish like you doing with someone like me?" Bacchus asks.

Haymitch gives him a blank look. "Aw, don't sell yourself short. Not everyone can pull off algae-colored hair," he deadpans.

Bacchus tugs at his beard. "No, who'd you piss off? What did you do?"

"It's rude to ask the victim what they did to deserve it," Haymitch tells him tersely. The ice is getting thin there, but what the hell is this guy fishing for? If he wants to be told he's a prize, or that he _sexy_, gods save us- well, they can just sit here all the night through. He'll say those things if he has to, it wouldn't be the first time; but it's going to have to be an order.

"A Districter with a sense of propriety! How delightful!" Bacchus exclaims, clapping a hand on Haymitch's back. "Ah well, whatever you did I'd wager that after tonight you'll never do it again."

"You smooth-talker," Haymitch says mockingly. "I bet you say that to all the guys. Or girls. Dogs? Whatever it is you usually fuck."

"Did they hand you over just for being mouthy?" Bacchus asks, not really expecting an answer. "That seems harsh. But- I don't judge! We're going to have a memorable night together. Finish your drink. Time's wasting."

Haymitch drains his wine glass in a single gulp and shoves it across the bar so that it flies off and shatters on the floor behind the counter. He shrugs, smiles his slanted smile at Bacchus, and begins unbuttoning his shirt. "My thoughts exactly. Let's get on with it. Time's wasting, Bacchus. And time is like precious gems, rainbows, a bunch of other beautiful shit. Kinky venue, by the way. Not what I'm used to. But whatever floats your weird little boat. _I don't judge."_ He shrugs out of the shirt and drops it over a vacant bar stool. You'll want to get undressed, too," he tells Bacchus as he takes off his undershirt. "Or at least take out your cock."

"Whoa! Whoa, easy there," Bacchus says, still smiling but looking rattled. "Stop undressing!" he demands as Haymitch undoes his belt.

"Your party," Haymitch says, shrugging and assuming a look of jaded boredom.

"Is the room ready?" Bacchus asks the bartender.

"It's been ready since you reserved it this morning."

"Come along then, my pretty one. Let's go somewhere more private and you can finish undressing for me," Bacchus says leeringly.

He takes Haymitch's hand and slides off his stool, pulling Haymitch along with him. There are a couple of good-natured whistles as they cross the room, and Bacchus tells them to get their own catamite.

Through the door they go, and straight into a well-lit bedroom. There's a high four-poster bed and a nightstand. Sitting on the nightstand are two rectangular boxes, one silver and set with sapphires and the other jet black and long and narrow. Leaning against the nightstand is a black cane topped with a silver wolf's head. Bacchus shuts the door and locks it with a click.

"You know, you're the most expensive sex I've ever paid for and yet the only one I'm not permitted to kill. Isn't that strange?" Bacchus says blandly.

What the hell? Haymitch's hands fumble in the act of unzipping his fly. Bacchus stares back at him, his expression unchanging, letting his words sink in.

"So, dogs then?" Haymitch tries to sound nonchalant as he shoves his trousers down and steps out of them. Fuck. He's locked in a private room in the back of a private club with painted-over windows, in the presence of a psychopath. He looks at the cane again, feeling queasy realization swamp him.

"No, not dogs," Bacchus says, smiling. "Avoxes. Don't worry about the cane, Haymitch. We'll get there soon enough, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it."

"Avoxes?" Haymitch asks. No, this can't be happening. This has to be just another fucked-up nightmare. This is only a mash-up of another session with Wenceslas, being waited on by the morbidly silent red-garbed slaves, and his own addled brain.

"What did you think they do with the old models when the new ones come in?" Bacchus moves towards Haymitch. "Take off your briefs and bend over the side of the bed."

"You can't do anything that leaves a mark," Haymitch tells him, backing up a step. "That's the rule."

"That rule has been suspended for tonight. You've been bad, and I'm going to punish you. Or, if you don't cooperate, you can watch while I play with Peeta instead."

Haymitch pushes the last bit of protection down his legs and steps out of them. He hesitates a second and then bends over the edge of the bed, his whole body tense. "I attacked my prep team on the first day of the Tour. They put their hands where they had no right to. I warned them."

Bacchus's hand comes between his legs and cups him, rubbing and squeezing gently. "Like this?" he whispers. "Are you going to attack me Haymitch?"

"I'd kill you in a second if I could," Haymitch growls, forcing himself to stay still.

"But you can't, can you? Not unless you want to die, slowly and badly, in the Capitol dungeons. Not unless you want Peeta and Katniss to be where you are: naked and bent over a bed in front of an endless stream of new masters, night after night. Right now, your defiance is the growling of a barely weaned puppy." He lets go of Haymitch and gives his ass a familiar pat. "So, let's get started, shall we?"

Haymitch wants to ask what's coming, but he doubts if he could speak around the hatred filling his throat. At any rate what came out wouldn't be a question. _Someday I'll kill them for this_. It's nonsense, a wish, a weak fantasy to get him through a few more hours in hell. But the promise glows in his mind like an ember, and the burning is great.

"Count for me," Bacchus commands. There's a whistling sound, and the cane cracks down across the center of his ass.

"Fuck!" Haymitch curses, pushing himself up against the bed.

"Down, boy." The cane bites into his left lower thigh just above the knee, and Haymitch falls forward onto the bed. The next blow hits him right on top of where the first landed, and he yelps an inarticulate cry. The next is lower down on his ass, and he has to be bleeding. It feels like the cane is cutting through his flesh.

"You didn't count. I'll have to start over," Bacchus tells him.

Count? _Fuck_. Sick fucking- He screams, then stammers out: "One!"

His upper thigh. Gods, it _hurts_. "Two!"

High up, almost on his lower back. "Three!"

The right hip, like the Peacekeepers with their batons. "Four!"

Same place. It's a hell of a lot worse than batons. "Five!"

The middle again, and it tears another cry from him. "S-six!"

The right thigh. His leg jerks away from the impact, twisting. "Seven!"

His upper thighs, pushing his right leg back into place. That leg jitters uncontrollably. "Eight!"

The middle again. This time he sobs. "N-nine!"

Low on his ass, biting, shoving him forward into the side of the bed. "Ten!"

The right thigh. "Fuck! Please stop!" He doesn't care, just let it stop.

The right thigh again, exactly the same place. "Tw-twelve!" he gets out, somehow.

"Eleven. Don't cheat, or we'll have to start over," Bacchus admonishes him.

For the third time in a row the cane bites at the muscle of his right thigh. "Twelve!" The muscle feels pulverized, destroyed, a spongy mess.

The left thigh this time, and it's intense and shocking. For a few seconds he forgets how to breathe. "Thirteen!"

Back to the right thigh. It hits with a wet sound, like his leg is rotten fruit. "Fourteen!"

The cane hits the middle of his ass. "Fifteen!" Please, please, please…

"Almost over," Bacchus says. Then he brings the cane up hard between Haymitch's legs. Haymitch howls, all thought of numbers driven from his mind in the white-out agony.

Bacchus steps back and looks at the bloodied cane. The wolf's head drips rubies onto the floor. "First blood to you, old Bersicker," he murmurs softly, petting the air a hairsbreadth above the wolf with two fingers. "As always, my friend." Gently, reverently, he leans the cane against the nightstand.

Haymitch's right thigh is bleeding freely; Bacchus scoops up some of the blood and coats his cock with it.

Meanwhile, Haymitch doesn't move. Not even an inch. He barely breathes. Holding still doesn't help, but moving is unthinkable. Bilious pain fills his groin and lower belly. He badly wants to touch himself. He needs to know how bad it is. What if the cane crushed his balls? What if it's just a swollen, spongy sack of destroyed tissue now? Blood trickles down his thighs; if the cane could lay open his skin like that it could tear open his sack, too. He's never felt anything like this before. Hell, what if Bacchus has just castrated him with a goddamn cane?

I'll kill myself, he promises desperately. If he did that, I'll kill myself. Tonight. I can't live like that. Can't.

He might have done it. It seems horribly plausible. Why not, right? Snow would have no problem with such an exponential, drastic, way-out-of-proportion, bounding-fucking-_leap_ in the level of shame and humiliation Haymitch has to somehow live with. Balthamos would fucking _love_ it. (Sick fuck. I'll kill him for this. I'll kill as many of them as I can. And then myself. We all deserve to die.)

He might have done it. Haymitch thinks more than half of the johns are men. It's hard for him to keep track, but he feels like he gets fucked more often than he takes the injection. So he thinks most of them are men, and very few of the men give a damn whether he gets hard or not while they're fucking him. Bacchus really could castrate him, and they'd keep right on selling him. For all he knows it's happened before to other Victors: the ones who were too aggressive, who growled instead of licking the masters' hands. And why would Bacchus risk doing irreparable damage, unless it wasn't going to matter? Even if he's still a man, he probably won't be by the end of the night.

He _will_ live like that, if that's what Snow's decided to do to him. With his eyes closed he sees the months of that life stretching out ahead of him. It might be years until the Resistance is ready to take the kids away to their safe place. Until then, there's no one else to protect them. Black despair rises in his mind.

A heavy hand rests on his lower back, which is devoid of any trace of Thread's whip thanks to the Capitol's 'beautification' treatment. Then he feels Bacchus begin to push into him.

"Easy now. Relax," Bacchus says in a pleasant, cajoling voice that is a stunning treatise on the Capitolite opinion of Districters. That he would say those words, now, after what he just did… with what he's doing… Incredulity and Hatred fight viciously for the upper hand while Rationality bleeds to death in a shadowy corner. Maybe he really isn't human any longer. Bacchus is still talking, so he tunes back into the soundtrack.

"This part doesn't have to hurt. If you just keep still and relax, I won't touch your welts again until I'm done having you."

"Gods, you're so damn thoughtful," Haymitch bites out.

Bacchus slaps him right over one of the fresh wounds, drawing a shuddering gasp from Haymitch. "And you're stubborn," he says in that same pleasant tone. "Now relax." He slowly wipes the blood off his hand in a long swatch down Haymitch's ribs.

Every time Bacchus pushes all the way in his hips bump painfully against Haymitch's bruised and broken skin. Haymitch is aware of starting to feel dizzy.

"Please stop," he says finally.

"Stop fucking you?" Bacchus asks, actually stopping for a second. "Come on now. Don't be absurd. This is the fun part."

"Touching them," Haymitch clarifies, acceding to the abysmal madness of a reality where that's all he can ask.

"Oh." Bacchus holds still for a moment, considering. "I didn't even think of that. That's not what I meant. Obviously. But. I will try to go easier on you," he finishes magnanimously, beginning to thrust again. Haymitch closes his eyes and bites his lower lip, trying not to pass out.

"You can touch yourself if you want," Bacchus offers, moving a little faster. His hips knock into Haymitch jarringly once before he goes back to bumping. Haymitch hears him exhale loudly, almost groaning.

Shaking, he slides his left hand over the sheets and under his hips. His fingers graze his balls, and tears of pain spring instantly to his eyes. Bacchus slams into him again, and the combination forces a harsh sob from him.

Bacchus does groan when he hears that. He abandons all pretence of 'going easy' on his victim and begins riding Haymitch hard. He grabs Haymitch's ass with both hands and squeezes. A roaring fills Haymitch's ears. Vertigo swamps him. The pain in his balls ignites and blooms into a bright fire rose. He screams involuntarily and almost unknowingly; only a tiny portion of his fading consciousness registers the horrible noise. One tiny bit of luck befalls him now, which he utterly fails to notice: he doesn't feel it when Bacchus cums inside him, or hear his rapist's ecstatic groan.

At the pivotal moment, Bacchus had cupped Haymitch balls to get the reaction he needed to push him over the edge. He hadn't even had to squeeze them. They're dark with bruising and mildly swollen, radiating heat. They go perfectly with the raised welts on his ass and thighs and the garish streaks of blood. Bacchus pulls his softening cock out slowly and tucks the now torpid organ back into his pants without wiping off the blood.


	33. Bacchus: Carouse

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Warnings: Same as for the previous chapter. Not for kids. This whole story is 'not for kids'. Non con and torture. If you're too young for it, or apt to be upset/offended, please don't read it.

Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato. As to your (rhetorical?) question: If it does then I guess we're both terrible people. And in that spirit, let's get even more twisted!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 33**

"Get up on the bed. Lie on your back." Bacchus watches his victim move to obey him. He's already favoring his right leg, more dragging it than lifting it. Haymitch pushes himself up onto the bed with his left leg and lies down gingerly on his left side before rolling onto his back. His chest heaves a couple of times before he falls still, staring expressionlessly up at the ceiling.

It'll be now then, Haymitch is thinking. Bacchus is going to finish the job now. The fucking is done. There's no other reason to make him lie here like this. He tries to block everything out and remember exactly how he felt when he entered this room, before the pain started. He doesn't want to forget what it felt like, being a man.

Bacchus moves to the nightstand and picks up the silver box. He sits down on the edge of the bed and flips up the clasp. For the moment he keeps his back to Haymitch, letting the anticipation build in his mind. The blond hasn't moved. It's a creaky spring mattress; Bacchus doesn't have to see him to know he's lying right where he was told to, flat on his back with everything on display. His blood will be seeping through the sheets, into the mattress. The sheets are included in the price of the room, burned after each customer finishes with them. The mattress is all-over rust-colored stains. Dozens of slaves have bled on it. Haymitch is the first pet in this room, as far as he knows. They're usually cosseted, pampered things, only rented to the unimaginative wealthy looking for a quick roll in the sheets.

"What were the names up your prep team?" he asks, running his fingers over the contents of the box. Ostensibly this is punishment for the unruly pet, so he should probably remind Haymitch why he's here. Before they both get too distracted.

Haymitch's voice is raspy, like his throat is sore. "I don't know. All of you Capitolites look the same to me."

Bacchus plucks two of the objects from the box and sets it aside. "Stubbornness is perhaps a useful trait in a Tribute. But reality is different for Victors, isn't it? You'd really do better to cultivate acceptance." Pulling his legs up onto the bed, he turns toward Haymitch. He's holding a cigar and silver lighter. Flame shoots up with a flick of his thumb, and he watches Haymitch take it in. Bacchus smiles down at him with sadistic joy. "Yes, you know what comes next." He straddles Haymitch's bare chest and slowly lowers his weight onto him.

Haymitch twists under him, struggling. "Get off! I can't breathe!"

"Yes you can. Easy, now. Relax," Bacchus says again, lighting his cigar. He takes a slow drag on it and leans down, blowing smoke into Haymitch's face.

It's acrid, a thick cloud that stings his eyes and stops up his nose. Haymitch turns his face away and with a wrenching effort rolls onto his side, coughing spasmodically. The crushing weight on him shifts, lets up for a second, then settles on his waist. It's easier to breathe in this position. He lies still, taking deep, loud gulps of air. Alright. Alright. S'okay. The pain in his side steadily increases, like Bacchus is somehow gaining mass as he sits there, getting even bigger. He takes another breath, and the air tastes of blood and smoke and sex. He tries to move again, and it's like a bag of heavy rocks dropping onto his abdomen. He's trapped, only stillness and the rank air of this room left.

Bacchus lifts himself up a little and pushes Haymitch's unresisting body back into a supine position. This time he sits down on Haymitch's flat abdomen instead of on his chest. Perhaps he really is a bit too stout to take his seat further up. He'd taken Haymitch's reaction for the mindless panic of any injured animal pinned down in a helpless position, but with this one it's better not to take chances. It wouldn't do to break the pretty little pet's ribs and maybe puncture a lung.

This time his weight draws a short whine of pain as Haymitch squeezes his eyes shut, his nose briefly wrinkling and lip drawing up in a quick, unconsciousness display of teeth. Bacchus smiles at the mixture of satisfaction and excitement that always fills him at this proof of how animalistic Districters really are. Other than turning his head to the side Haymitch makes no further efforts to get away, and there's no more of that convulsive gasping.

"Look at me," Bacchus commands firmly. Haymitch turns his head back and looks up at him with unreadable gray eyes. Bacchus strokes his side approvingly, rewarding the quick obedience. "Tell me what you're thinking right now."

"Hell's bells, you are fucking heavy, you shit," Haymitch hisses at him.

Bacchus sits back. He takes another puff of his cigar, then casually grasps Haymitch's jaw and shoves his head up and to the side. With his free hand he touches the glowing end of the cigar to the man's neck.

The smell of burning skin tickles Bacchus's nose as Haymitch gasps and then whines in pain. He lifts the cigar away and lets go of Haymitch's jaw, admiring the perfect scarlet mark left on his neck.

Haymitch looks off across the room unseeingly. His neck hurts, but that's hardly surprising. He'd raked off the bandage as soon as he got back to his house. That bandage had circled his neck in a stiff white collar, and Katniss knows, fuck, _everyone_ knows. A collar was just too damn symbolic. _Pet. Goddamn pet_. Everyone knows. They must have told Elsabet. He'd woken up on the faded floral couch, a heavy blanket draped over him, and as soon as he'd moved his head he'd felt it on him. He wouldn't have expected that from Elsabet; she'd seemed more the sort for condemning looks and pointed silence.

Seeing the mess his neck actually was under the bandage had called him back a few steps from the edge. The bruising is more emphasized than hidden by his golden stubble, spreading halfway up his cheekbone on the right side for some reason (oh, right, that had been the boy). Neat black stitches line his throat. Feeling gingerly, he confirms that they circle most of the way around to the back of his neck. He smiles at himself in the mirror and laughs aloud at the ghastly effect. He looks like something that dug its way out of a week-old grave. It calms him. He sighs and begins trying to replace the torn bandage. Peeta's been hovering ever since last night, and if he sees this he'll probably jump to the conclusion that his psychotic former Mentor intends to remove his own stitches with a carving knife or something.

His neck hurts, but no, it's really nothing to be worried about. Bright terror eats at the edge of his consciousness, and he shakes his head and struggles not to acknowledge it. He'll just get drunk and everything will be alright for a while, too dulled and cushioned to cut at him. But just about everything hurts: his abdomen, his legs, his ass, his- He pushes the awareness back, but he's losing ground now. There's too much pain. And the failed hanging was months ago. And Peeta isn't waiting outside the bathroom door, ready to bull his way in if Haymitch doesn't keep responding to his incessant queries. And- he isn't in his house, or in the Village, or in 12…

Bacchus grins malevolently down at him, his weight slowly crushing Haymitch's stomach and intestines, making him feel nauseous. Then Bacchus is gone again, and with a vivid flash Haymitch is once more running through the endless trees and trying to hold his intestines in. This time he can't. They fall out around his hands, hot, slippery loops that seem to cool and dry in seconds once they're Outside. Hunched over, somehow still running, Filigree crashing through the woods right at his heels. His insides fall to the grass in front of him, his feet tangle in his own guts, and he falls to the ground on his side. The rest of it comes slipping out of the gaping wound in his belly, instantly drying out and dying in the warm, golden sunshine. Filigree's gone, now; he's left to die in slow, convulsing agony while _they_ watch and cheer.

Haymitch's eyes are wide and unfocused, the pupils so dilated that barely any of the gray is visible. He's gone tharn, and who'd have thought a cigar burn would be the thing to push him over the edge?

"Haymitch?" Bacchus snaps his fingers an inch in front of those staring eyes and gets a reflexive blink, nothing more. The burn stands out on his pale throat like a hickey. It's a downright shame that they'll remove the scar. How many other marks of domination have been removed from this one's skin in the short time he's been on the List? Bacchus can't believe that any man would allow Haymitch to leave his bed unmarked. To his mind the scar enhances Haymitch's looks, but he supposes women might not like such things on their pets.

"Come on now, Haymitch. Come out of it." Bacchus reaches behind himself and squeezes Haymitch's balls.

The trees and the grass and the golden sunshine of his death waver and fade out; but he's not dying, just waking up into a new nightmare. He's sobbing. He can't stop. It doesn't matter. His balls hurt sharply, with a screaming, lunatic pain that eclipses everything else Bacchus has done to him. Where his balls _used_ to be hurts. Aw, fuck, it's done. While his mind was back in the Arena like a damn idiot who'd fallen asleep sober, Bacchus castrated him.

"Damn you," he chokes out around the rage and shame and despair.

"Now, now," Bacchus chides. "You're too pretty to use such ugly words." He flicks the cigar into an ember glow again and presses it down on a jutting collar bone. Haymitch jerks under him, takes a shuddering breath. He's mastering himself again; even as he winces in pain and involuntarily tries to push himself down into the mattress, he's stopped crying. Bacchus lifts the cigar away, watching his face intently. He's not aware that he's holding his own breath, lest it cause him to miss some slight sound or distract him from some flickering change of expression.

"Should have saved it for the finale, Bacchus," Haymitch says. His voice is too raspy. He takes a breath, realizes that the room isn't actually pitch dark: his eyes are still closed. He opens them, rolls them in darkly amused irritation at himself, his cowardice, his weakness. Suppose it's fitting, now. He chuckles, and it turns into an out-and-out laugh.

Bacchus's face, hanging above him all pale and round like a full moon- he laughs harder- tightens up by measurable degrees. It is as though his features were all held together by nuts and bolts, and someone is giving every screw a firm half-turn to the right.

"What are you laughing at? How can you laugh? Have you lost your wits?" Bacchus demands in what's meant to be a harsh, threatening, very very intimidating tone. He sounds- fretful. In an instant his voice transforms into the long-forgotten voice of Haymitch's mother when he was just a dumb little kid, throwing rocks up onto the roof or putting a bumblebee down his brother's shirt: _Have you no sense at all_? That voice brings a little flash of pain that could sober him if he'd let it. But the Man in the Moon is looking down at him, maybe at this whole fucked-up twisted City, and he looks _pissed_.

Still laughing, Haymitch tries to explain. "Not funny, right you are, nothing to laugh at, but-" He breaks off, starts again. "Cigar burns, right, like some slow-witted bully in the Seam, and you're making such a _business_ out of it. As a follow-up to cutting someone's balls off, it's kind of underwhelming." There, he's said it, he's admitted the latest mutilation. Denial really wouldn't have been feasible. He can't keep laughing, but he holds onto the mocking grin. "Underwhelming, unimaginative; kind of pedestrian, really."

"You thought I'd-" Bacchus shakes his head. "What wonderful places your mind goes. One hardly need use such crude implements as canes on you. No, the ladies wouldn't thank me for doing that, would they?"

Haymitch tries to rearrange his world view to accommodate the information. There's relief, mind-numbing and heavy, relief that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant but just _is_. The wild, hard, shiny carelessness that had let him laugh up at his torturer dissipates like fog. Every muscle relaxes, and he's abruptly aware of every fresh wound on his body, every screaming nerve ending. He turns his head to the side and closes his eyes. "Just stop, can't you? Stop. It's enough, now."

Bacchus presses the cigar onto his chest, grinding it in hard. "There are worse things coming, pet. Think of this as an interlude. Maybe nothing as bad as being castrated, but bad enough to have you screaming for the whole club to hear."

"Fuck's sake, why?" Haymitch asks. "What the hell do you want?"

Bacchus looks at the cigar in his hand. The end is mashed. He tosses it off the bed and picks another from the box. Then he puts it back, closing the box gently. "Enough, now," he says, and Haymitch's eyes snap open and dart to him. Bacchus said those words in a quiet, dragging, weary tone that makes it way too obvious.

"You sure you don't want to trade places, Bacchus?" he asks.

"Pick a number," Bacchus says, ignoring the question.

Haymitch sighs. "Sixteen," he says at random.

"Something between one and ten."

"Six, then."

"I'm going to get off you now. Stay still. You'll want to remember that I'll be having fun with Peeta later tonight if you don't hold still." Bacchus slowly gets up. If Haymitch has the guts to attack him or is terrorized enough to run, now will be the time. He doesn't, though. Usually Bacchus would have broken something essential by now as a safeguard, an ankle or a knee. But he can't do that with this one. Haymitch is still well able to fight or try to bolt. Bizarrely, unnaturally, he just waits. What is this boy, Peeta, to him? Both of them blonds, and Haymitch is the right age for it… maybe a bastard? It's a little eerie, even creepy, how still he lies when he must know that something bad is coming. We'll see if it lasts.

"Six, you said." Bacchus takes a seat beside his bloody legs and rests a knee on one shin. He grips Haymitch's rights foot in one hand and bends the last toe back towards the top of the foot. There's a brittle snap, no louder than the sound made by the cracking of knuckles. And there's a hoarse, rough-sounding cry of agony. Not quite a scream, but well on the way. Haymitch draws his left foot up but he doesn't kick, not even in the jerking, instinctive way that Bacchus might have let pass. His breath is very loud in the small room. Bacchus glances up at him, thinking he might be excited- pain and terror sometimes have that effect, the mind is very perverse- but he's just lying there, belly drawn in and chest heaving.

Bacchus wraps his fingers around the right big toe and breaks it in the same way. It takes several seconds longer and the cracking sound is much louder, loud enough to be clearly audible over the scream.

"Fuck, stop it! Please! What the fuck do you want from me, you goddamn shit?"

"You can beg prettier than that." Bacchus grabs Haymitch's left ankle and drags his leg out straight. Shifting his knee forward, he takes hold of the still undamaged foot and casually breaks the last toe on it, too. "I want you to apologize, and do it on your knees, and beg me for the privilege." He bends the big toe back until it cracks and leaves it sticking up and to the side at its exotic new angle. "I want you to never be able to even consider calling any Capitolite a shit ever again." He breaks the second toe on the left foot. "You did say six, didn't you?" He grasps a final toe, the third on the mangled, discolored left foot, and snaps it. "There you are. Six." He lifts his weight off of Haymitch's shins.

Haymitch rolls onto his side and draws his legs up without a thought. He wants to sit up and rub his feet, squeeze them, at least shield them from further damage. But he knows without putting words to the idea that he won't be able to sit up.

"I'll give you a minute to collect yourself," Bacchus tells him, "before we move on to our next game."

How can there be more? "Please, stop," he says again. Then he bites his lip against the other words that want to come out. He won't, he won't, he _won't_. "Sorry," he mutters, and black self-hatred makes him deliberately try to curl his toes so that for a few seconds the pain eclipses everything else.

"I could stop," Bacchus says slowly. "But I'll need more of an apology than that." He cards his fingers through Haymitch's hair, tucks it behind his ear again. "You really are exquisite."

Haymitch shudders but doesn't reply. He _won't_. Damned if he will. Not that. Not with this man. Not even for Peeta. There's no conviction to the promise, though. Wishful thinking. All defiance is wishful thinking. Six months ago it would have been 'not with anyone.' And just look at you now, sweetheart. He bites his lip, then viciously twitches his mangled foot again. Look at you.

"The next thing will hurt even more," Bacchus warns him. "You could stop this. I won't even make you get up. All you have to do is beg for it, and then…" He strokes his crotch suggestively. "Well- ask and you shall receive."

"Fine," Haymitch mutters. "Let's get on with it, then."

"Beg, pet." Bacchus sounds impatient, hideously eager. Even in the depths of the well, a weary contempt floats down and sinks into the shreds of his consciousness. Well, it would seem that all Capitolite men are bull-simple and unfailingly guided through life by the rudder between their legs. He wouldn't have guessed that. Silly of him.

Haymitch pushes himself up onto one elbow so he can meet Bacchus's eyes, which was probably going to be Bacchus's next command, anyway. He rolls his eyes, huffs. Alright, then. On with the show. He says in a honeyed, sugary voice, "Pretty pretty please."

Bacchus smiles back at him. "Perhaps I expect too much of someone who's been destroying their brain with hard liquor for two decades."

"Twenty-four years, actually. Damn stubborn thing won't die," Haymitch says.

Bacchus laughs. "I never thought I could so thoroughly enjoy a bed-warmer who came with such onerous restrictions on what I'm allowed to do. Really, I expected an interesting novelty tonight, nothing more."

"Bully for you," Haymitch says.

"Bend over the bed again, like you did at the start of our evening together."

"Yeah, don't really think I can get up right now."

"Okay, I'll move you." Bacchus lays his hands on Haymitch's legs, begins to pull him towards the edge of the bed.

"Hey, get off!" Haymitch barks in startled pain. It's way, way worse when he moves. Once again the pain rears up, occluding the contempt and hatred and disgust, displacing the usual residents of his mind for a moment. He gasps several times as Bacchus continues to drag him. His legs fall off the edge of the bed and his toes hit the floor and he screams. It tears at his throat, adding its own pain. Soon he won't be able to make a sound. When he comes back to awareness Bacchus is pressing him down on the mattress.

"I'm going to let go now. Don't fall. That would hurt." Bacchus titters at his own joke. The weight lifts.

There's the sound of Bacchus moving around behind him. He hopes Bacchus is going to fuck him, because he doesn't think he could handle another caning. He'll go mad. He hopes it will be a caning, because if he ever gets out of here the memory of the cane will lose its edge a hell of a lot quicker than the memory of Bacchus rutting into him. Part of him, confused and sick and well on the way to irreversible, raving, rabid-animal madness, wants it to be both. Full speed ahead. Maximum damage with minimum effort. Easier that way, this gibbering voice insists.

Something pushes against him, hard and unyielding. Shock wand, he thinks. Then it starts to push in and the tearing, cutting, slicing pain of it hits him.

"It's spiked, Haymitch," Bacchus says, a hand splayed on his lower back. "All along the length, on all four sides. Hold still, now. The less you move, the less it will tear you up. Maybe you won't need stitches." He presses it in further. The blood wells up around it, starts to make new runnels and streams down his victim's already bloody thighs.

"Take it out," Haymitch says between whines of pain. "Please take it out."

"Too late. I hope you'll remember this next time a master tells you to beg." He pushes more of it in, going slowly, watching its length disappear. He lifts his hand from Haymitch's back (he couldn't stand up now, anyway) and unzips his fly. He strokes himself slowly.

Haymitch hears distant laughter. The club, he remembers. The gentlemen's club. If he can hear that, they must have heard every scream. He'll kill them all. Burn this place to the ground. He could do a hell of a lot before the Guard could get here.

He can't endure this, not even for the kids. It's too much to ask. No one could. And he never claimed to be brave or strong, or anything at all except a drunken fuck-up. It's impossible, and why should he have to? He wouldn't even know Katniss or Peeta if they hadn't won the Random Death Lottery last year. He can't take this. It's as humiliating as being fucked. It hurts more than the cane. Stop, gods, _stop_.

Bacchus watches him dig his fingers into the sheets, watches the rigidly still lines of his back. "It's all in," he tells him softly. "Do you like it fast or slow? Haymitch?"

"Fast," the single word comes back. It's all he can manage. Let it end. He's going to pass out again. Maybe when he wakes up it will be over. Maybe.

"So do I," Bacchus says. He grabs Haymitch's hips and begins to grind against him, pushing his cock into the raw welts left by the cane. He does it fast and hard, leaving the spiked toy in the other man so that every movement will tear him more.

Haymitch slips in and out of consciousness. He stops being aware of the noises he's making. After several minutes he stops making them. When he's conscious he just stares with half-closed eyes at the foot of the bed, letting his body move with Bacchus's thrusts. Mostly he's unconscious. More and more he's unconscious.


	34. Study the Floor

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: As always, TheOnlyPotato, thanks for your too kind words. And I do apologize (which is not quite the same thing as being sorry). Perhaps stronger warnings were called for. That last one was hard to write and almost as hard to reread, for me at least. So, here: something _slightly_ lighter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 34**

Effie lets herself into the penthouse, holding Peeta's dinner jacket in front of her like a screen. She's wearing a tight, fixed smile. She traveled all the way from the gala like this. Worse, she was actually at the gala in such a state. Her picture will be in the gossip rags tomorrow. Thinking about that, Effie gives a despairing little sigh and drops the designer jacket to the floor.

It's not fair! Nine years, she's worked for this! And it hasn't exactly been a walk in the park, trying to coach the Tributes from 12 into some semblance of grace and dignity and give them the image they'll need to attract sponsors. Just managing Haymitch is a full-time job.

And now that she's finally earned an invitation to the Victor's Ball, that awful Cobalt has destroyed her dress! Honestly, she can't fathom why he was invited at all. Surely it isn't necessary to invite _all_ the past Victors to the ball? The gala dance and feast at President Snow's mansion is the main social event of the year. Six months go into planning every detail, from the ice sculptures to the fireworks displays. In Effie's opinion, such effort justifies just a _tiny_ modicum of discretion in compiling the guest list.

She couldn't help but wonder, on the interminable ride back to the Tribute Building, if Cobalt was there to replace Haymitch. One drunk for another, my friends, they'll never know the difference! Wow, what a sleight of hand! She's wondered if Cobalt was _intended_ to make an ass of himself. There'd been quite a few well-bred little titters behind delicately raised hands. And certainly the media will have a field day. Euphemia Trinket shrieking as Cobalt stumbles into her and dumps most of his eighth or ninth screwdriver down her bodice. _That's_ how she'll be remembered at her long-awaited Victor's Ball.

Speaking of people who really should have used a little more discretion, it's simply outrageous that Haymitch _wasn't_ at the ball. He's toiled for this moment even longer than she has. And he'd been brilliant this last year, no one could deny that. Throughout the Games he'd kept two steps ahead of all the other Mentors, anticipating his opponents' moves as flawlessly as if he had all the other control rooms bugged.

He'd even had Effie tricked. He'd seemed to be focusing his efforts on Katniss and ignoring Peeta, which she had expected. There could only be one Victor, and she'd have had to be blind to miss how he favored the girl from the very first moment he saw her. Not even Effie had guessed that he meant to have both of them crowned, not until that first stunning announcement from Seneca.

Haymitch had accomplished something no other Mentor had even thought possible. It's just disgraceful that he wasn't there to enjoy every minute of tonight. He'd earned it.

She supposes he is enjoying himself, after a fashion. Haymitch no doubt prefers sex to attending one of the formal occasions he claims to loath. But it just seems to Effie, as she looks down at rose-colored, filigreed silk that will never be wearable again, that surely tonight's appointment could have been scheduled for before the dance, or after it.

"Pick that jacket up and put it over a chair before it gets all wrinkled," she tells herself in a bad impersonation of her usual bright voice. She ignores herself, knowing she'll regret it later. It's too late to change and make a triumphant reappearance at the ball. Peeta and Katniss will be joining her in just over a half hour, and Haymitch might be back before them. All she can imagine doing right now is taking off her sodden dress and having a nice, comforting bath. Abandoning the jacket and its scarlet accusations of rudeness and messiness, Effie heads for her room.

She'd have missed him if he'd have kept still. They'd left him in the middle of the main room, so he'd be the first thing the kids would see when they got back from the ball. Since then, Haymitch has managed to drag himself mostly behind a couch. He has no conception of how long he's been in the Penthouse, which probably means he's been fading in and out of consciousness. That'll fuck up your sense of time faster than just about anything else. It doesn't feel like he's been unconscious, though. The pain has been completely without breaks or punctuation, as far as he can tell.

From the waist down he's one solid knot of pain. His ass and thighs throb, his feet ache sharply, and his cock and balls feel like a goddamn wasp is stinging them over and over. And every movement causes a stabbing pain inside him. If the rest is creeping psychosis, still possible to deny like whistling past the haunted house, that last feeling is screaming, knock-you-down-and-drag-you-into-the-house insanity.

They'll find him. The kids will see him like this. Haymitch tries to swallow back a sob. He drags himself further behind the couch, stopping when the feeling of his broken toes dragging across the carpet becomes too much. There's a horrible feeling of wetness, and he rests his face on the carpet and bites his already bloody lip.

He hears the door open but it's all he can do to draw his legs up, curling up small in the hope that they won't notice him. The drugs were intended to render him so weak that he'd stay right where they put him, stretched out and on display. Well, they underestimated his desire to hold onto what's left of his mind. He thinks he's completely behind the couch now, and maybe they'll walk right past him.

Effie catches the movement out of the corner of her eye and spins toward it, raising her hands to hide the stain on her dress. She takes a step towards him, not noticing the sound of his mind shattering under her foot.

"Haymitch?" she asks in a shocked, disbelieving voice.

He lies on his side next to the couch, blood staining the white carpet all around him. He's naked. Long, even-looking welts cover his ass and the backs of his thighs. That's where the blood's coming from, she tells herself. Some of those marks are bleeding, that's all. Never mind, dear. Go summon a medic.

Even as she thinks these things, she knows that she can't summon a medic. Several of the welts _are_ bleeding. But most of the blood is on his inner thighs… and on the inner part of his rear.

Dropping down beside him, she lays a hand on his shoulder. His appointment had hurt him, and then he'd been brought back here and just dumped on the floor like a bag of trash. His handler hadn't taken him to Victor's Hospital. He hadn't even cleaned him up.

Maybe his handler is busy making sure the man who hurt him like this is arrested. She needs to believe there's a good reason for such completely indifferent treatment. But even if the handler just dropped him off before running back out to meet with the Capitol Guard, why hadn't he at least put Haymitch in his bedroom? Why, if Cobalt hadn't spoiled her dress the children would have found him like this!

And just how long has she been here, anyway? The ball was almost over when she left. Katniss and Peeta might show up any minute now! Haymitch will die if they see him like this!

"I'll be right back," she promises, not knowing if he can hear her.

Haymitch doesn't bother to respond. He's entirely baffled as to what would be appropriate. What does one say to a sort-of-friend/sometimes-lover when they find you naked and bloody after yet another man has finished rutting into you? All he can seem to think is: _Effie_. Well, that's a nice bonus for them.

She returns holding a man's garish red dinner jacket which she spreads over his hips and thighs. "Haymitch?" She timidly taps his shoulder, her hand quick and bird-like. "It's okay. You're handler is speaking to the CG. Whoever did this to you won't get away with it." Her voice echoes down at him from the permanently sunny climes of Effie-land, and Haymitch mentally adds the sound of harps. He's pretty sure Effie hears harps.

Talking to her right now is like chewing on sand. A wave of loss crashes over him, leaving him blinking and swallowing back cries that will only make this more unbearable. He'd _liked_ Effie, damn it. It's stupid, but he had. Effie was always the only Capitolite who'd treated him like a man, instead of a dog that had been groomed and given a fancy collar and taught to do amusing tricks.

"Help me get to my room, okay?" he asks her, hating the words.

"Okay," Effie says quickly, anxious to do anything that will make this better. Then she just sits there and looks at him.

"Right. Give me a second," he mutters. He braces his hands against the floor and tries to push himself into a sitting position. For a second his weight shifts onto his ass, and he hisses and squeezes his eyes shut. Then he falls back onto the floor. It's the shit they injected him with, of course. His muscles feel rubbery and, absurdly, the pathetic attempt to sit up makes him feel tired.

"Just go away," he tells her, closing his eyes.

"What's wrong? Why can't you get up? What did they do to you?"

"Nothing. They're 'the best class of people', after all. I'm just all tuckered out from enjoying myself tonight," he says bitterly.

"They aren't allowed to hurt you. They'll be punished," Effie insists, shaking her head in denial of what he's implying.

"You might want to move, Princess. You're blocking the view. Wouldn't want to spoil the kids' surprise."

"No. No, no, no." Her voice is becoming high-pitched, edging closer to hysteria. "Oh, no." He wasn't left like that deliberately so the children would find him. Because that would mean it had been planned that his appointment would beat him and- and take him too roughly. That would mean he had no say in who he was sent to or what was done to him.

"The Victors enjoy the opportunity to spend time with members of high society, as an ongoing part of their reward. And the revenue thus raised goes towards next year's celebrations, to make them ever more spectacular. It's a generous and benevolent system that improves everyone's lives." She recites this quickly, the textbook summary she's had by heart since her time at the Games Academy. Until now she'd forgotten that she'd even memorized that. It always just seemed like something she knew without thinking about it, like her own name.

"I'm fucking overwhelmed with gratitude," Haymitch growls from the floor. "Next time one of them is fucking me, I'm going to make sure and really appreciate my _reward_."

Effie tilts her chin up in her well-known defiant posture. "There won't be a next time. I'll speak to President Snow. I'll tell him you don't like it, and he'll have you taken off the List."

"Why the fuck do I even talk to you?" Haymitch says, angry and spiteful. "Get lost, Princess." Maybe the kids won't be back for a little while. Maybe the dance will run late. Maybe they'll get stuck in the _spectacular_ post-party traffic clusterfuck. Or maybe they'll elope to District Two, take new names, and become Peacekeepers. Any of those seem like really good options at the moment. Considering how long it's going to take him to drag himself to his room like some filthy paralyzed dog, Haymitch decides to root for the third option.

"You shouldn't move," Effie says distractedly. "I'll call a medic. Should I wait until they get here? Yes, I should. I will. And then I'll go talk to the President. I'm _sure_ he'll see me tonight."

And now she's babbling. Haymitch stops moving as he realizes that the red dinner jacket has fallen off him. He clumsily swipes it off the floor and sets about trying to tie it around his waist. It's better than nothing.

"Effie, shut up," he says tiredly. The damn sleeves won't tie. They're too thick and too stiff.

"Manners," is her automatic, unthinking, absolutely maddening reply.

Haymitch lays his head down on his arm. Maybe this is just a vivid nightmare. Because Effie showing up to lecture him about manners while he lies on the floor naked and bleeding is the sort of penny-dreadful absurdity that shouldn't exist outside of a nightmare, surely?

What Bacchus did to him wasn't a nightmare. He can feel the cooling wetness down there, is helpless not to feel it. It's a mixture of blood and spunk, and he turns his face into his arm and starts to cry because he just can't think about this anymore.

"You do think he'll see me tonight, don't you, Haymitch? My family has always been on good terms with President Snow. He-" She breaks off as a muffled sob reaches her. He's actually crying, albeit very quietly. The hitching of his breath seems to echo in the sudden stillness.

The door opens and Effie bolts to her feet like a startled deer. And her first thought is: _Thank goodness the children are here! Somebody must do something. Somebody must tell me what to do._ And right on the heels of that, brutally murdering the flash of relief before it can even really register in her mind: _The children mustn't see Haymitch like this!_

She steps in front of him and says the very first thing that pops into her head. "A moment, children! I'm unclothed!"

This is indeed a very poor lie, although Peeta spins around to face the door for a second before good sense reasserts itself. Someone raised that boy properly, which rather amazes Effie considering his provenance.

"Indisposed, I meant! I'm indisposed, so out with you both! Go on!" She flutters her hands briskly and takes a stab at giving them a commanding look. Meanwhile she surreptitiously flounces out her skirt, appreciating the haute couture girth of it for brand new reasons.

"What's going on?" Katniss asks in a 'gods-what-_now'_ tone that she must have picked up from Haymitch. Clearly this one had an upbringing much more typical of what Effie's come to expect from 12.

"Are you alright, Effie?" Peeta asks, giving her a mildly concerned look.

Effie huffs at the stubborn girl and favors the boy with a small, grateful smile. She manages to do these things simultaneously, a feat only possible for a Capitolite. "If you must know, Haymitch and I are in the middle of something. So if you could just give us ten minutes."

"Behind the _couch_?" Katniss snorts, rolling her eyes. "Classy moves, Haymitch."

"You got three seconds, _honey_, and then I'm coming out," Haymitch calls to her. His voice is still a little thick, but that could be taken for something else.

Evidently Peeta does take it for 'something else'. He blushes and mumbles, "We'll be back in ten. Come _on_, Katniss."

"Right behind you," Katniss says emphatically.

Once they're gone, Effie turns around and sits down again, taking off her heels and carefully setting them at arm's length. Haymitch's eyes are red from his brief spate of tears, but he gives a watery chuckle and mutters, "Unclothed. Great. Something distracting you, Princess?"

"Lying isn't one of my many talents," she retorts. "Can you walk?"

"Goddamn it, Effie, do you think I'd still be lying here if I could walk? Exhibitionism isn't my thing."

"Don't curse at me, Haymitch. You and that awful Cobalt have utterly ruined a night I waited nine years for."

"Cobalt? What does Cobalt have to do with anything?" He holds up a hand to forestall her indignant reply. "Tell me while we move, Princess. The kids are coming back, and I'd hate to waste your heroic defense."

"You want me to drag you?" She gives him a dubious look.

"Get me a blanket. Then…" He looks around, considering the options. "Can you help me get on the couch? I think I can bluff from there."

"You're bleeding! That's a Wurlitzer couch! You'll ruin it!"

"Fuck's sake, Effie…"

"And I'm beginning to see why you're in this state," she says archly, fed up with his complete ingratitude.

"I'm sorry. Please get the blanket?" he asks her in a subdued voice.

"Of course." She goes to get it, thinking it very unfair that _she_ should feel like apologizing now. It's not _her_ fault that somebody hurt him tonight.

Not that it's his fault, exactly. He can be vexing, but that doesn't give his appointment the right to beat him. She's never heard of such a thing happening before. And for him to break down like that, it must hurt a great deal.

She returns and drapes the blanket over him, noticing the way he immediately relaxes. He closes his eyes, and it really looks like he's about to go to sleep right there. Uneasy thoughts about blood loss and medics chase each other through her head.

"No medics. Please," he says without opening his eyes. "Just need sleep."

Effie drapes a second blanket over the couch, hoping it will be enough protection. Then she shakes Haymitch's arm. He draws away sharply, scared gray eyes focusing on her.

"The children are coming back," she reminds him. "You have to get onto the couch."

"Okay," he says in a soft, catching voice. She watches him struggle to get up on his knees, watches his arms and legs quivering and his face getting grayish with pain. She'd never realized his eyes are the exact shade of pain.

"What did they do to you?" she whispers, stricken.

He sits down but somehow manages to keep from collapsing again. "Tell me about how Cobalt ruined your big night," he says instead of answering, his voice tight. He begins to half-crawl, half-scoot around the edge of the couch, leaving a trail of blood.

Effie stares at the scarlet streaks and then seizes on Haymitch's suggestion like a drowning woman.

"Well, the ball was beautiful, just spectacular. There were thirteen ice sculptures this year instead of the usual twelve- one for each of our Victors! And so life-like! And the fireworks display was coordinated to live musical performances and lasted over an hour. And there was such a feast! They had that slimy raw fish that you like, and that really rich potato soup, and apricot ice cream- the favorites of each of 12's Victors. And they had dozens of different mixed drinks, enough to keep even you busy."

"Get to the part with Cobalt," Haymitch huffs impatiently, finally dragging himself onto the couch.

"I am!" Effie snaps. Haymitch rolls over onto his side facing her, pulling the blanket up over his bare shoulder and resting his head on his arm again. His eyes slip closed, and Effie's expression softens. "I was having a pleasant chat with Octavia when Cobalt came blundering into me and dumped an entire glass of sticky orange stuff down my dress." Haymitch laughs sleepily, and Effie sighs and runs her fingers through his hair. "I don't think he even saw me. He made not the slightest attempt to avoid running into me. If he hadn't been so obviously soused, I'd have thought he did it on purpose."

"Mm-hmm," Haymitch murmurs. "Maybe he did. It's what I would have done. _Bustles_. Somebody has to take a stand before this _fashion_ starts to get silly or something."

"So, what happened to you?" Effie asks, glancing over her shoulder at the door.

"Besides the obvious?" Haymitch mutters, wishing he'd had the presence of mind to feign sleep.

Effie blushes and ducks her head, embarrassed. "I can see that someone was rough with you, sexually," she says without looking at him. "Please tell me what else." She braces herself, half-hoping he'll just go to sleep.

"Caning, a few broken toes, some burns, and- caning," he recites, pausing before the last word.

The door opens again before she can think of anything to say.

"Haymitch?" Peeta asks, coming straight over to the couch. Katniss trails him, stopping a few feet back.

"What's with all the blood?" she asks, looking at the carpet and then at Effie in a distinctly accusing manner. _Gods_-what-_now_. Effie wouldn't be at all surprised if she pulled a flask out of her little jeweled purse.

"Rough night," Haymitch says laconically. "You two run along and play quietly somewhere."

"Let me look you over, okay?" Peeta asks.

"Not in front of the _girls,_" Haymitch whines obnoxiously.

"Okay. Let's get you to your room," Peeta agrees good-naturedly. He's surprised by how well Haymitch seems to be taking this.

"Naw, I'm good here," Haymitch returns, definitively proving the jinxing power of unspoken thoughts.

"Alright," Peeta says. "Effie, Katniss, would you-"

"Scamper off to bed, kiddie. I need to sleep before round two," Haymitch drawls, heartlessly setting fire to Peeta's last hope that he was going to be rational about this.

"Haymitch, come on. You need to let me make sure you're okay."

"He isn't okay. His appointment beat him and broke some of his toes and burned him," Effie says suddenly.

"So much for you," Haymitch growls, clenching his fists in the blanket. "You're nothing but a Capitolite bitch after all."

Effie gasps and jumps to her feet.

"Effie, he-" Peeta tries to catch her.

"Meant every fucking word," Haymitch talks over Peeta. Before Peeta can try again, Effie has disappeared out the door into the night.


	35. Dead Birds

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Sorry this is late. I've been out of it for fifteen days now. Everything seems crappy and mundane and utterly pointless.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 35**

A sleek ebony town car passes her at a leisurely rate. Effie watches it slow to a crawl in front of her. She wishes whoever it is would leave. Twice in the same night she's out in a stained dress, and this time she doesn't even have Peeta's jacket. On top of that, she can't seem to stop sniffling.

Oh my dear, you aren't being quite honest with yourself there, are you?

Alright, then. Effie bows her head and voices a watery sigh. She can't seem to stop _crying_, then. She's walking through the very heart of the Capitol in a stained dress, crying. And she must stop at once and go back to the penthouse and change, because this is _not_ how a lady comports herself.

Ah, but there's the rub. She simply can't go back there. Never and not at all. Or at least not until the next Games. Thank goodness it's the last night of this wretched Victory Tour. She'll walk to her own apartment and spend the night there and meet the children on the train tomorrow. And _him_, of course.

Thinking of Haymitch makes her start sobbing again, and she wishes with almost painful desperation that she'd grabbed her clutch on the way out. Of all the times to be without her monogrammed handkerchiefs!

Shallowly, she's hurt. His parting words resound in her mind, making her feel like a spun glass ornament in the hands of a careless child. He's never called her that before. He's vexing, inappropriate, too often clever at other people's expense; but he's never been cruel. Is that what he really thinks of her? Was it just a reaction to what happened to him tonight? Or was he finally cutting through the ruse of friendship (affection?) they'd needed to form in order to work together? She's heard somewhere that people are more honest when they're upset…

Under the hurt caused by his words, she doesn't want to look. Under that is Haymitch as she found him tonight, coming home from the ball. Haymitch, as they left him. Here be dragons.

Effie reaches the car, steps alongside it. It's either that or run off across the street. And she can't possibly run in these heels.

Why can't you just leave me alone? she silently rails at the car's occupant, fixing a bright smile on her face and blinking rapidly. You can't utter a single ill-considered word if you hold your tongue against the roof of your mouth, Euphemia. This was a very effective trick back in her Academy days when the other girls upset her, and she falls backs into the habit without thought as she smiles smiles smiles at the opening car door.

"Effie, climb in," Plutarch says warmly from the car's dim interior. "I'll give you a lift to wherever you're going."

"Thank you," Effie acquiesces, hearing the shake in her voice but helpless to do anything about it. She steps in, sitting on the bench seat facing Plutarch.

It's a mid-size town car, the inside done in a warm, rich amber color. Not as flashy as the vehicles kept by most of the city's elite, but Effie thinks it suits Plutarch very well. He's always been one for more subdued clothing and accoutrements, perhaps in imitation of President Snow. The bench she's seated on faces forward, while Plutarch has his back to the driver. There's the usual soundproof, opaque privacy panel with its closed window, and maybe two and a half feet of space separating the benches. A couple of wood-paneled refreshment cabinets are built in under Plutarch's bench.

"Effie, my dear, what's wrong?" Plutarch asks with genuine concern, reaching into his jacket and producing one of his own handkerchiefs- wine red with the monogram embroidered in deep purple. He holds it out to her, and Effie accepts it gratefully and dabs at her eyes.

"Oh, Plutarch, how glad I am that you happened by! I've had the most dreadful night," she says, taking a few calming breaths.

"Will you have some wine?" Plutarch offers, watching her with sympathy and expectation.

"Just a small glass, thank you." A lady doesn't refuse any drink offered by her host. Effie takes strength from these simple principles, things taught to her in earliest childhood and reaffirmed throughout her life. She takes a sip of wine, feeling ever more composed and in control. "It's Haymitch. He had an appointment tonight, one that kept him from attending the Victor's Ball. And they hurt him. And then his handler just left him lying on the floor of the penthouse, in the Tribute Building. He was bare, and he was hurt, and Katniss and Peeta might easily have walked in and seen him like that."

"How very upsetting," Plutarch says mildly. "But in what way was he hurt? Surely he wasn't too badly off to get to his room?"

"He couldn't walk," Effie says in a small, distant voice. She's remembering it again, every little detail, the horrible shock of it. She's helpless not to, now. "He could barely sit up. There was so much blood."

"He was bleeding?" Plutarch prompts, watches her intently.

"Yes. They beat him. All over his rear, and his thighs," Effie whispers, hardly aware she's speaking anymore. Those long, thin marks…

"And what else?" Plutarch's voice is as low as hers, his words a suggestion rather than a query.

"I think… they must have… forced him," Effie admits, the sound of the words destroying her last precious illusion. "There was so much blood."

"They did force him," Plutarch says bluntly. "Just as they have dozens of times before. Just as they'll continue to do for as long as he can bring in money."

"No!" Effie exclaims. "No, they won't! I'll speak with the president. Haymitch is different from the other Victors. He doesn't like it. They have to stop."

"None of the Victors like it, Effie. Most of them are better at coping, but that's only because this has been happening to them since they were teenagers. A teenager is much easier to break."

Effie shakes her head rapidly. "I can walk from here. Please pull over."

"Talking to the president won't do any good," Plutarch continues implacably. "There, now. Have some more wine. I don't want to upset you, Effie. You've been told certain things all your life, and you couldn't help but believe them. But some of them just aren't true."

"Why?" Effie asks, glaring at him. "Why are you telling me these things? Even if they're true, they've got nothing to do with me. I can't do anything about that."

"There are so many iniquities and injustices in our society. Good people- people like Haymitch- lead short, miserable lives. A few of them are brought to the Capitol to entertain the sons and daughters of privilege in whatever way is demanded of them- their singing voices or their services in bed or half a dozen other things they can be trained for. The rest of them are lumped into the masses of common slaves, toiling day in and day out in exchange for a barely livable dwelling and just enough food to keep them going."

Effie nods. She's never heard such words before, never even thought them- not as such. But hasn't there always been the scent of this, tugging at the very edge of her consciousness? Hasn't she looked down from the stage year after year and felt the unwelcome pity cloud her thoughts for a moment or an instant? This is what she saw in Haymitch's eyes almost every time he looked at her during her first year as an Escort, what she initially mistook for hate. It's what she still catches a glimpse of so often, right before he gives that sardonic laugh or says something sarcastic or calls her 'Princess'.

These are the thoughts she's never before dared to entertain, and the part of her that wants to be good, and a proper lady, and loyal to the society that has given her everything, but most of all _good_, shrieks a last-ditch cacophony at her and beats its wings frantically around her ears. Pleading, begging, flailing… dying. Oh, dying.

Silent tears run down Effie's face, leaving no tracks in her perfect make-up. She looks up at Plutarch, meeting his eyes.

"I'll help you in whatever way I can," she whispers. It's too late for her, and she knows that. Right now, that's a relief. The murdered part of her lays heavy and dark over her mind, and she wants to curl up and wail like she hasn't since she was very small and her mother was there to hold her and rock her and sing to her. But such comfort is as forever out of reach as the young, happy, vibrant woman she herself was when she arrived at the ball such a long time ago. There's only this dark sister left, little changeling shoved out into the light.

Effie, beyond help or hope of succor, faces the spymaster and nods calmly as he gives her his first instructions.


	36. Useless Little Kid

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 36**

"You kids get out, too," Haymitch demands, his voice pain-roughened and furious. Stupid pink-haired _Capitolite_.

"Haymitch, we can't," Peeta says helplessly. "You're bleeding."

"Yeah, that's just one of the fun parts of being violently raped," Haymitch growls at him. He closes his eyes again. "Fuck off, Peeta."

Momentarily speechless, Peeta looks at Katniss. There's no help there. Katniss is studying the floor, her shoulders hunched.

"You're hurt. You need help," he tries again.

"No, I need sleep and I need you to leave me alone. Fuck's sake, kid, do I have to draw you a picture?"

"Leave him alone, Peeta," Katniss says abruptly. Peeta turns toward her in alarm because her voice is choked with tears.

"Katniss? What's wrong?"

A scornful laugh comes from the direction of the couch. "Yeah, what could possibly be wrong? Real winner you got here, honey. The kid's going to be _so_ intelligent."

To Peeta's shock, Katniss is openly crying now. Her voice shakes badly, but she still gets her words out all too clear. "Just leave us both alone, Peeta! We don't want your help! You _can't_ help either of us! Stop being so fucking _nice_! We don't deserve it."

Peeta stares at her and wonders what's happening. Is it possible that she's drunk? He's been with her the whole evening, and he feels sure he would have noticed if she'd been drinking.

Haymitch knows perfectly well what the girl's problem is. He was eight years old when his mother was pregnant with Roen, and he remembers scenes like this well enough. Even in the midst of a hormone-driven psychotic rant, Katniss is making more sense than his mother did. It'd be a shame to interrupt her now.

"I just don't get where this is coming from," Peeta says slowly. "Of course you deserve it. You're the most amazing person I know. Please, calm down."

Katniss shrieks, loudly and piercingly. Peeta jumps back a good three feet, startlingly agile for a kid with only one good leg. Meanwhile, Haymitch scrambles to sit up, the pain temporarily eclipsed by high-octane terror and adrenaline. His heart is in his throat, his hands clenched into fists.

"Shut up! Shut up shut up _shut up_! He's a whore, I'm breeding stock, and you're just _useless_!" She whirls around and storms off toward their bedroom.

"Katniss-" Peeta says, going after her.

"Stay away from me!" The door slams, the bang as loud as a gunshot and gravid with finality.

Peeta drops into one of the chairs facing the couch and hides his face in his hands.

Just as he's about to say something to the boy, Haymitch glances down at himself and realizes the damn blanket fell away when he dragged himself up. He'd been sitting there naked during that last exchange, the blanket bunched uselessly behind him. Holding onto the back of the couch with one hand, he clumsily rakes the blanket over his lap. Even that much movement brings on a wave of vertigo which forces him to clutch the back of the couch and rest his head against the cushions until it passes.

No wonder the girl went mental. She'd seen him fucking naked and with blood and filth all over him. _Fuck_. He might as well have stayed in the middle of the goddamn floor where they'd left him.

It looks like there's a good chance _both_ the kids are going to be crying in a minute, so with an effort Haymitch pulls himself together enough to speak. "Congratulations, boy. You're going to be a father."

Peeta looks up at him, parsing the words slowly. "Really? You're just now getting around to saying that?" He holds up a hand, shaking his head. "Never mind, I'll take it. _Thank_ you."

"Thought you might need a reminder. She's _pregnant_. She's off her damn gourd."

"What would you know about it?" Peeta says with reflexive defensiveness.

Haymitch rolls his eyes at his tone. Off her gourd she may be, but Katniss made some valid points. "I know more about it than a dumb kid like you."

Peeta actually smiles at that. "Congratulations, Haymitch. You're going to be an uncle."

Haymitch snorts. You just can't talk sense to some people. "I'm not your brother, Peeta. I'm just the person you got stuck in the room with." _Hell_ of a thing for the kid to say. If he could believe half of what Peeta says, he figures he'd be at least a quarter of the way to being a decent person.

"Semantics," Peeta says, still smiling.

"I bet you think all the stray dogs in the Town are your pets, too."

Peeta shrugs, indicating his unwillingness to pursue the topic. "Does she really think I'm useless?"

"Of course not." Haymitch shifts his position on the couch and winces. He doesn't want to stay out here anymore. If he falls asleep in a room anyone could walk into, he's guaranteed to have the full-on screaming nightmares. He doesn't want to be here when Effie gets back, either. "Help me get to my room, okay? It's been a damn long night."

"Yeah, of course." Peeta favors him with the sort of approving smile that means he's done something Peeta considers 'sensible'.

"Just that," Haymitch clarifies. "We're still not playing doctor."

"I won't do anything you don't agree to. I promise."

A pathetically absurd image arises in Haymitch mind as he regards Peeta and carefully doesn't say anything: the Capitol whore, clad only in a blanket and still bleeding from the attentions of his latest john, demands to be spoken to like a man. 'Carry me to my room and put me to bed, and show some _respect_!' Good luck with that, sweetheart. _Nothing you don't agree to_ is a better offer than you've gotten from any other man in the last six months.

Peeta takes his arms and starts to pull him to his feet. The blanket slips and Haymitch wrenches one of his arms free to grab it, falling awkwardly back onto the couch. He hisses at the stab of pain that knifes through him with the impact. "Forget it," he says through gritted teeth. "Scram. I'll sleep on the couch."

Hoping the words won't make things worse, Peeta ventures, "You know, I have seen you undressed before."

"Not like this, you haven't."

"Alright, then, I won't look. Once you're up you can hold onto the couch and I'll wrap the blanket around you again."

"Fine."

Peeta hauls him up, keeping his face averted. The blanket slithers down over his ass, catching on the bloody raised welts left by the cane. Fifteen of them, spread over his ass and the backs of his thighs. They'd made him count. They'd actually made him count.

"Step around here so you can hold onto the armrest," Peeta urges. Haymitch obeys him wordlessly. He has to lean forward to support himself against the couch's low armrest, simultaneously being careful to stand on the sides of his feet. And now he's naked and bent over a goddamn couch. Is it even possible Peeta didn't plan it this way? This isn't a position anyone ends up in by accident. How did he not see this coming? Peeta- his mind shies away and he drags it back- even Peeta will expect to be compensated for his trouble.

A weight settles over his back, and Haymitch clumsily spreads his legs and braces himself as well as he can. It's just one more cock. How can it matter at this point?

"Come on, stand up," Peeta coaxes, taking hold of his arm through the blanket draped over his shoulders. The blond probably isn't even aware of what he just did. Apparently it's just one more thing he does without thinking, now. Peeta hadn't known things had gone that far.

Haymitch lurches upright, giving Peeta a half-grateful, half-ashamed look that he isn't sure how to interpret. They start across the room, Haymitch holding onto the blanket with one hand while Peeta holds his other arm. He limps heavily, his steps slow and jolting.

"You shouldn't be walking on broken toes," Peeta chides him, moving carefully at his side.

Haymitch makes a face and mimics Peeta under his breath, the kind of childish response he falls back on when he can't spare the attention for a properly sarcastic retort. Peeta bites the inside of his cheek to suppress an amused smile. He doubts Haymitch would react well to that at the moment.

"Fuck, Peeta, stop stop _stop_," Haymitch says in a strained voice. He sways, and the hand clutching the ends of the blanket together at his chest tightens in a white-knuckled grip.

"I've got you. It's okay," Peeta reassures, wrapping an arm around the injured man's back.

He's trying to walk on the edge of his feet, but his toes keep bumping the floor and it feels like spikes being driven down the lengths of his feet. The blanket rasps over his open wounds like a file and every step tears at his insides. Nothing, _nothing_ about this is okay.

"You have to keep moving," Peeta tells him. "We're almost there."

"Fucking _hurts_," Haymitch mutters miserably.

He's bleeding again (did he ever stop?). A trail of red coin-sized drops marks their progress across the room, so close together that they almost form a continuous line in places. He shouldn't be on his feet. He shouldn't be _here_. He needs the attentions of a medic. If they were back home in District 12, Peeta would make him sit down and then run to get Elsabet regardless of what he wanted.

But they're in the Capitol, and that means Victors Hospital. Peeta shakes his head despairingly, remembering. After the Games he'd woken up strapped to a table, on his back, naked and alone. He hadn't even been able to raise his head enough to see what was missing. The medics that occasionally came into the room to hang new IV bags or change his bandages had responded to his questions only with meaningless platitudes like 'just relax', 'try to sleep', or 'you'll be fine.' When he persisted, they sedated him. Gradually he had become so stressed that he'd started to hallucinate. When they finally told him they'd had to remove his right leg below the knee and replace it with an artificial one and it was time for him to get up and learn to walk again, his shock had actually been mixed with gratitude that they were finally speaking to him.

"You're going to be fine," he hears himself say, the words echoing in his memory. Meaningless words, to him and certainly to Haymitch as well. _Useless_ words.

Beside him, Haymitch breathes harshly in and out and then starts moving forward again. Peeta keeps his arm around the other man.

"I won't call them unless you say it's alright," he promises again, to himself as much as to Haymitch.

"C-call who?" Haymitch asks, stuttering.

"Medics."

"_Don't_," Haymitch says quickly. "D-damn it, Peeta, you f-fucking _promised_."

"I won't. Okay. I won't," Peeta hastily reassures him. "Here, lean on the wall a little."

"Not that heavy," Haymitch grumbles, but he clumsily switches the hand holding the blanket so he can brace one hand on the wall beside him.

"Sorry," Peeta tells him. "It's the leg. Sometimes it's still a little hard to balance."

"Right," Haymitch growls. "I hope I'm not _hurting_ you." His hair is in his face, and the Penthouse shifts unsteadily between wavering bands of gold. "How much further?"

"Maybe fifteen feet. We're almost there." And then what? The bleeding needs to be stopped. Something has to be done about his toes. He probably has wounds that need cleaning. "You have to let me help you," he says rather hopelessly.

"You?" Haymitch scoffs. "You're useless, remember?"

"Haymitch," Peeta says, and the man winces. Disassociation and denial are what he needs right now, the only things that make it possible to stumble down this hallway. He's pretty sure they're the only things making it possible to breathe, or talk. And Peeta seems perversely determined to keep dragging him back.

"Listening," he declaims, inviting Peeta to shut the hell up with his tone.

"What if you die?" Peeta asks, making it worse by looking at Haymitch.

"It's not poison. You don't actually die of it," Haymitch growls. "Katniss is still alive, isn't she? There you are."

Peeta doesn't say anything else. _He's hurt_, he reminds himself firmly. And, _You can't be a kid anymore._ And, _Calm and reasonable. _He thinks the reminders are helping. Not that he feels calm or reasonable. Reluctantly he sets aside the impulse to gently ease Haymitch to the floor and then run to the bedroom and beg Katniss to forgive him.

She didn't want it. What he did was rape. She'd acquiesced to it; she'd even been graceful enough to participate instead of just lying there and submitting. If there was still room in their reality for him to be a teenager, he'd deny his culpability. There isn't. He can't. The stark, undeniable, irrevocable truth is that he raped Katniss. It doesn't matter why. Nothing will ever expunge his crime.

She won't accept his apologies. He's learned better than to offer them. Sometimes he thinks it would be so much better if she seemed to hate him, if she turned away when he entered the room or demanded that he sleep on the couch. As much as that would hurt, she should allow him to atone. He would do anything to _earn_ her forgiveness.

Instead she simply gave it to him, as though it were nothing. She's far too good for him. She should have had Gale. At least she would have wanted to have a baby with him. Or she should have had someone as smart and brave as her, someone who would have thought of a way to escape or some ploy that would have spared her. She deserves so much better than the clumsiest, most self-centered, most thoughtless of the Mellark boys.

"Do you hate me, Haymitch?" he asks softly.

Haymitch casts a sidelong look at him and snorts derisively. "Don't be such a _girl_." He huffs, almost leaves it at that, and then mutters, "No." Teenagers. Hell's bells.

Peeta pushes the door of Haymitch's room open with a feeling of dull relief. He's suddenly exhausted. All he wants to do is retreat to his own room and curl up with Katniss. He has the wretched presentiment that he won't be able to either sleep or find the motivation to get up again once he lies down. But she'll be there, asleep next to him and breathing quietly in the darkness. Under the awful strawberry stuff her preps are currently fixated on, she'll smell like smoke and woods.

"Bed?" he asks. Haymitch gives a jerky nod and allows himself to be guided in that direction. The Avoxes have been through, cleaning and tidying everything in the Penthouse, and for once Peeta is grateful for their presence. At least there isn't the usual detritus of any lair Haymitch stays in for more than a few hours: piles of clothes, empty and half-empty bottles, furniture shoved hither and yon. How Haymitch navigates his chaotic environment when he's too drunk to even walk a straight line still baffles Peeta, even though he's watched the man do it more than once.

Haymitch lifts his left knee onto the bed and leans forward to rest his weight on his hands. He drags his right leg up onto the blankets and lies down with his back to Peeta. The blanket has slipped partway down his back and he tries to pull it up over his shoulder again. But it's wrapped around him now, and he can't pull it up without first somehow lifting his whole body off the bed for a second. He gives up, turning his face into the pillow. He tries to curl up, but the blanket restrains him as effectively as the straps on the beds at Victors Hospital. The heavy fabric clings soddenly to him. It's adhered to his skin by his own blood, trapping that other filth against him. Even the bit that came out, he can't get rid of. It's going to dry on his skin.

"Let me clean you up a little," Peeta coaxes. He can't leave Haymitch like this.

"Uh-uh," Haymitch tells the pillow. "If you want me to indulge your creepy power fetish, you're just going to have to make an appointment. No freebies."

Peeta comes around the bed so that Haymitch can see him without moving. He starts to speak, and then remembers that Haymitch doesn't like people to stand over him when he's hurt. He sits down on the edge of the bed and starts again. "You know that's not-"

"Don't you have a wife to harass with your _needs_?" Haymitch interrupts him. "She married you. Seems like this is her problem, now. Off you go." He raises his head from the pillow and fixes Peeta with a venomous look. "Unless you just have a preference for men, of course."

"Sh-" Peeta stops himself before he even gets the first word out. He stands up, paces restlessly back and forth a few times. Haymitch tracks his movements, presumably waiting to see if Peeta is going to yell at him or hit him or just possibly _leave_. His ruined hands have curled into fists, and Peeta stops and stares at him.

Haymitch sees him as a threat now. It isn't fair. He's never done anything to Haymitch except try to learn from him and look after him and befriend him.

"Okay," he says in a decisive tone. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to untangle that blanket from you so you can move without falling out of bed. I'll try to do it without touching you any more than I have to. But that's what I'm going to do, even if you hit me."

Abruptly the fight goes out of Haymitch. He lowers his head to the pillow, though his eyes helplessly continue to follow Peeta. "Tomorrow," he says in a tone that's dangerously close to pleading. "I'll let you do whatever you want." The words nearly choke him. "Just give me until morning, okay?"

There's nothing he can say. Peeta sinks down to the floor beside the bed. Nothing he can say. Nothing he can do. "I'll stay," he tries.

"What will that help?" Haymitch's eyes slip closed and he blinks a couple of times and shakes his head hard without lifting it from the pillow. The drugs are overwhelming him now, the drugs and the shock and the hideous tiredness. Lying down was another stupid mistake he'd had to make. Now he'll sleep, even tangled in the blanket with that indescribable filth drying to a scale on his skin. They meant for him to sleep, and they control him.

Peeta watches Haymitch struggling to stay awake, and the only words in his mind would just make this worse: Don't be scared of me, please, don't be scared of me.

"Not scared," Haymitch mutters, his words dragging and his eyes half-lidded. Peeta gives him a surprised, considering look. It changes to one of guilt after a few seconds. He must have spoken without meaning to, or noticing.

"Tired," Haymitch continues, struggling now to form the words. "Hurts." He forces his eyes open again, but focusing is impossible now. Shit. He hadn't meant to say that. His mind is getting sluggish. He can't hold onto the simple thought. It slips below the surface, until all that's visible through the thickening, dark-colored muck is a vague fear and the lingering need for something he can't name.

With the last fading bit of consciousness he twitches his foot, thumps it weakly down against the unyielding mattress. Clarity returns in a bright dazzle-snap of pain; for a moment he can't speak, can only shut his eyes and grit his teeth and clench his fists in the folds of the blanket. By the time the flare of agony starts to recede he feels himself sinking down again, sinking rapidly. Peeta's standing over him, a hand on his shoulder. Haymitch thinks the kid might be shaking him. Fuck's sake, he suddenly thinks with wholly unexpected amusement.

"Just tired," he says, quickly but carefully. This will be the last chance. If the last word Peeta hears from him before he passes out is 'hurts', he'll sit by the bed all night wringing his hands and probably convincing himself of his ultimate culpability for the Games, Katniss's teenage-mom status, and the shitty state of life in general. "Go away. Scamper back to the little wifey. I'm super." Loopiness is creeping back in. He's well aware of it, but he can't help it. He makes a final effort to collect his thoughts. "Get out, kid."

Peeta slowly withdraws his hand and steps back. Haymitch sounds a little better, a little more like himself. And he's not going to be awake much longer, anyway. And he _told_ Peeta to leave. Decisively Peeta turns away and walks to the door. Then he stops and looks back. He _can't_ leave.

Haymitch is asleep, still and quiet and breathing slowly. Peeta opens the door the merest crack and slips out with furtive movements, closing the door with exaggerated care. He heads for his room.

He _sneaks_ toward his room, sneaks away from Haymitch and the things he knows need to be done. He's not a kid anymore. He'll call it what it is.


	37. Not Quite Reality

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, Hulluelefantti!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 37**

Katniss jolts up, instantly transitioning into full wakefulness. Her gray eyes are wide as she scans the darkened bedroom, holding her breath. There's movement beside her and she snaps around with serpentine quickness, already coming up onto her knees in readiness to strike out or leap away.

Peeta leans away from her, head lowered. "Easy," he whispers. The sound that dragged them both back into this reality comes again, unmistakable this time: a ragged scream.

"Haymitch," Peeta says.

Katniss nods, pulling her knees up to her chest. "I thought maybe last night was just a dream," she murmurs. "What are we going to do?" Her voice is tired and flat and hopeless. She sounds old.

"I'll take care of it," Peeta tells her. "Go back to sleep."

Katniss snorts, a thoroughly unlovely sound in anyone else. She looks so deceptively vulnerable, sitting there in the dark with her hair loose and falling around her shoulders, so precious and so breakable. Peeta takes her hand and squeezes it, and she returns the gesture accompanied by an unreadable flicker of deep gray eyes. He gets out of bed, straightening his t-shirt and shorts as he makes his way to the door. "Go back to sleep. I'll be back soon," he whispers before slipping out of the room.

Peeta flicks on the lights in Haymitch's room, quietly shutting the door behind him. The bed's in disarray, sheets and covers pulled halfway off and trailing over the floor. The dark-colored blankets don't show it from here, but the beige sheets are streaked and blotched with red. The bed is empty.

"Haymitch?" Peeta steps cautiously into the room. There's no answer, not even the sound of breathing. Haymitch could be anywhere in here. And if he were still in the grip of his night terrors he'd be screaming or crying or at least panting. If he were awake and lucid he'd doubtless be telling Peeta to get the hell out. But there's only this frightening stillness, as though he's lying in wait.

"Haymitch, it's just me, Peeta. Don't jump out at me, okay?" Tense, anticipating that at any second a deranged man who has about five inches and probably fifty pounds on him will come hurtling at him out of the darkness, Peeta slowly moves further into the room. He has no choice.

On the other side of the bed, bloody footprints track towards the open bathroom door. The light is off in the bathroom, and there's no sound from within. Peeta stops, looking toward that pocket of unknowable darkness.

This is bad. If he's in there, why isn't the light on? Why isn't he making any noise? Is he hiding in there? If he's that out of his head, he'll probably attack the first person who steps through the door. But what if he's hurt, worse than before? What if he tried to run on broken toes and fell, and he's lying in there with his head cracked open?

"You have to," Peeta tells himself. "There's no one else. You have to." If Haymitch comes at him, he'll try to slam the door shut between them. If that doesn't work he'll just have to hit him in the throat, put him down quick. Haymitch will stop when he recognizes Peeta. He wouldn't really kill him; even at his most addled he wouldn't do that. "You have to," Peeta tells himself one more time. "Go on."

"Haymitch, are you in the bathroom? I'm coming in, okay? Just me." One more step brings him to the threshold and he rapidly flicks the light switch and grabs the door handle, ready to jerk it shut.

Haymitch is crouching in the bathtub. He's naked, head bowed, looking at Peeta through a curtain of hair. He doesn't move or make a sound.

"Haymitch," Peeta says, coming into the room, "what are you doing?"

Something catches the corner of his eye, and he looks at the full-length mirror on the wall next to him. Up here at eye-level, it's a spider web of cracks. Some of them extend all the way to the gilded frame.

Peeta grabs a thick white towel from one of the shelves and drops to his knees in front of the tub. Haymitch isn't really crouching. That would probably be impossible for him right now. His feet are flat and pulled up under him, his back pressed against the smooth marble. Peeta touches his arm; he flinches and closes his eyes tightly. He's still deeply in the fog. With him sitting like that Peeta can't see everything they did to him, but he can see enough. The whole side of his right hip and thigh is a deep, angry shade of red and there are long, regular-sided welts where someone beat him hard enough to break the skin. The left thigh is better off, but still heavily bruised. There'll be more of the same on the backs of his thighs and on his rear. It has to be hurting him to sit there like that, but he's not moving: silent, head bowed, eyes closed. Both of his feet are swollen and discolored, his toes folded under to a degree that just shouldn't be possible. The exceptions are his big toes: they are canted outward at strange new angles. Fresh blood runs down his left hand and wrist in gory rivulets.

Peeta had intended to drape the towel over him and try to get him to stand up. Now he shakes his head and sets the towel aside, wanting to close his own eyes. Instead, he gets up. Keeping one eye on Haymitch, he gets all five of the washcloths from the shelf and runs warm water over them. As long as Haymitch is out of it, there's no reason to try to get him back into bed in this state. Peeta doubts he could make him move until he comes back a little, anyway. And the bed's filthy. He'll clean Haymitch up as much as he can, and when he starts to respond Peeta will be ready to drape the towel over him and go strip the bed.

"Give me your hand," he says. There's no response, but Haymitch doesn't resist when Peeta pulls the injured hand towards him. Splinters of glass protrude from the skin between his knuckles, and Peeta eases them out one at a time. One of the shards slices into his thumb and he hisses softly and wipes his hand on a washcloth. It's a thoughtless, reflexive movement. There's far more of Haymitch's blood on his hands than his own.

Dabbing away the blood as gently as he can, he tries to look for more splinters. His efforts are impeded by the blood that keeps welling up around the cuts. Bandages, he needs bandages. Peeta looks around the Capitol bathroom as though expecting a pile of dressings to be waiting next to the towels. Then he pulls off his t-shirt and starts tearing it into strips.

"Peeta?" Katniss is standing in the doorway, watching him, her sharp eyes taking in everything.

"We're fine, Katniss. Go back to bed," Peeta says, darting a look at Haymitch. He still hasn't moved.

Katniss comes into the room and drops down on her heels next to Peeta. "Haymitch?" she says in a wary, questioning tone. She looks to Peeta. "What's going on?"

"He broke the mirror. Really, you should go. He won't like you seeing him like this."

"I don't mean what's wrong with his _hand_," she snaps. "Hey, open your eyes!" She claps her hands. Neither effort produces any response. "How long has he been like this?"

"Since I got here." Peeta ties the strips of his torn shirt around Haymitch's hand and sets it back against his leg. "At least wait in the bedroom."

Katniss glares at him. "I have seen men naked before, Peeta. I know about what they have. I'm _aware_."

"Please. Look, I don't know how much of this he's processing right now, or how much he'll remember."

Abruptly, Katniss looks away. "You're right," she says, sounding upset again. "I'm sorry. This is just so fucked up, all of this. I don't even know what makes sense, or what to think, and I don't know what to do."

"Neither do I," Peeta tells her. "Would you get rid of the blankets? If you want to, I mean. If it bothers you too much, that's okay. I don't mind doing it."

"I'll do it," she says, standing up. She's keeping her eyes pointedly averted from Haymitch, now. She turns and walks out without another word.

Peeta begins wiping off as much of the blood as he can from Haymitch's legs. He tries to be gentle around the wounds, but he can't be sure whether he's hurting the man or not. There's still no reaction. "Can you stand?" he asks. He takes Haymitch's wrists and stands up. Haymitch comes slowly to his feet, his chin almost resting on his chest. It lets Peeta see how bruised his balls are, but there's nothing he can do about that.

Haymitch won't step out of the tub on his own. Peeta has to lift each of his feet up and guide it over the edge and down onto the tiled floor. The man moves woodenly, neither resisting nor helping. Peeta wraps the towel around his waist and pulls one limp arm over his shoulders. When he moves forward, Haymitch moves stumblingly alongside him. His gait is jolting and staccato. Whenever his toes touch the floor he jumps a little, hopelessly trying to favor both feet at once. His eyes are closed again, his features tight with pain. He has yet to say a single word, or even utter a sound.

"Bed," Peeta tells him, stopping. "Lie down." Katniss has stripped the bed to the mattress pad. She stands on the other side of it with her back turned to them, her posture tense.

Peeta has to push Haymitch down onto the mattress and lift his legs up. He spreads the towel over his hips. Then Katniss is at his side, pushing a cream-colored satin robe into his hands. "Put this over him. It's better than a towel." She keeps her face averted as Peeta switches the towel for the robe. Haymitch startles him then by moving, but it's only to draw his legs up and pull his arms in against his chest.

"Are you waking up?" he asks. Haymitch doesn't answer.

"Is this what we do, now?" Katniss asks. "Bathe him and put him to bed like he's a child?"

Peeta stiffens. "You didn't have to help. I told you I'd handle it." He tries to dispel the anger he feels at her words. Except for that horrible night when she came back from the forest, he's never been angry at her before. It's the last thing they need right now. "You heard what he's been through tonight. If you can't be patient with him, maybe you should leave." He searches for a way to soften his words. "I know blood upsets you. Really, it's fine. I'm almost done here, anyway."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant-" She shakes her head, brushes her hair back. "Look what they've done to him. Look what they've reduced him to. Do you really think babying him is going to help _at all_?"

"Don't use that word." Peeta twitches the robe up to cover one bare shoulder. "Someone had to clean him up. I don't know what else to do.'

"This is our fault." Katniss makes herself look at the figure on the bed, curled up under the robe. "They never would have gotten him if we hadn't come along."

"Yeah, I know. But what could we do? I'd die if those- those filthy bastards ever laid hands on you." He speaks desperately, pleadingly. Please don't let that be what she's suggesting. "Katniss, _please_." Impulsively he lays a hand on her belly, appealing to her. Katniss steps back at once, as though his touch burns. "Please, promise me you'll never let them take you. I'd _die_."

"I promise. Never. Not after what they've done to him." She can't even say his name in connection with the broken thing that lies curled up on the bed. Haymitch isn't supposed to be like this. He's supposed to be strong and irreverent and immature and infuriating. He's not supposed to be broken.

"They don't get to destroy both of us," she says lowly. If Haymitch doesn't come out of this, she'll be the only one left. Peeta isn't Seam. He's brave in his way, and sensible, and she thinks in time he'll be strong (if any of them live that long). But he isn't of their kind. Whatever she and Haymitch have started in Panem, she will have to carry on alone if he doesn't come back to them. And she doesn't know if she can do that.

"We'll find a way out of this," Peeta tells her. "District 12 and the Capitol aren't the whole world. We'll find a way to escape, the three of us and our families and-" he hesitates slightly, "- the Hawthornes. We'll go where Snow can't reach us."

"We'll die, you mean?" Peeta gives her an aggrieved look. "Sorry," she mutters.

"When we get away from all this, he'll recover," Peeta continues his ephemeral painting, insisting she believe in it. "He'll be just like he was."

"Oh, goody. I can hardly wait." Katniss rolls her eyes, manages a slight smile for her husband. It's worth it to see Peeta smile back. "Thanks for letting Gale be part of your fantasy future," she says to change to subject. "That was sort of sweet."

"Oh well, a man's got to do what a man's got to do," Peeta says, affecting a long-suffering tone. "I suppose I do have to include him, right?"

"Yes, you do," she says primly. She could kiss him. She really could. But she's not entirely sure that Haymitch is insensible, so she abstains.


	38. Take No Prisoners

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 38**

It's Sunday, the only day of the week that the mines are closed, and beautiful, sunny weather to top it off. Everything is green and bedecked with flowers (in the Village, at least) and the sky is a perfect gemstone blue. At almost 6pm, the temperature has dropped down into the mid sixties. The small park in the Village Commons seems to beckon hopefully, urging the residents to come forth and sit on ornate carved benches where no one has sat in decades, or walk similarly derelict (but perfectly maintained) paths.

Katniss pointedly draws the curtains, daring Peeta to say something about it. He doesn't, of course, and that only makes her more irritable. At seven months pregnant she's huge for the first time in her life and feels as ungainly as a toddler. And everything is so friggin' uncomfortable. Walking is uncomfortable. Lying down is uncomfortable. She can't even sit for more than a few minutes at a time without feeling like the sheer mass of her belly is pressing her into the chair and making it hard to breathe.

She drops moodily into an over-stuffed armchair, envisioning the wood slowly splintering beneath her. This is just so stupid. A baby weighs nine pounds, right? No way is this only nine pounds. Her luck, it'll be twins. That'll be the next thing.

"Can I get you anything?" Peeta asks mildly, prepared for any reply from 'ice water' all the way down to 'go to hell.' Finally, Katniss is getting a bit difficult and temperamental. Secretly, Peeta feels relieved.

Seven months in, and he has yet to see Katniss break down for no good reason. She eats whatever he prepares and doesn't make impossible demands for things like pineapple or shrimp. And during that month when she threw up every morning she invariably locked herself in the bathroom and shouted at him to go away when he knocked. It's not at all what his mother had led him to expect. Make no mistake: he's glad that his beautiful, strong Katniss hasn't dissolved into a hormonal basket-case. But sometimes he finds himself watching her and wishing she would do something just a little off-kilter, if only to ease the tension he feels. Very occasionally, he wonders if she's still pregnant at all. What if she's just, well, fat? He knows that's crazy, the kind of immature thought he can't afford to entertain anymore… isn't it?

"No. Well… can you bring me some walnut bread?"

"Yes, of course," Peeta says, getting up. Walnut bread is what he baked this morning, and he can't help wondering if it's what she really wants. "I can make you something else…"

The door opens out in the hall, and Peeta turns quickly to the doorway as Katniss heaves herself to her feet.

"Anyone home?" a familiar, slightly drunken voice calls.

"We're in here, Haymitch," Peeta replies, casting a puzzled look over at Katniss. She shrugs, as surprised as he is. Haymitch has never visited their house before. Visiting isn't really his thing.

Haymitch appears in the doorway, his gray eyes sweeping the room with a grim, tense watchfulness that belies his otherwise laid-back demeanor. He's barefoot, his toes awkwardly spread and half-curled under his feet. His gaze lingers on Katniss's swollen belly, acknowledging the damage he's done and his failure to protect her from Snow's machinations. He silently confirms to himself that there's no other obvious damage, and that Peeta seems to be okay. A sigh, quiet enough that you wouldn't notice it if you weren't accustomed to listening. When he speaks his voice is the old familiar drawl, edged with teasing good humor.

"You two look… _tense_. Did I interrupt something?"

"You could knock next time," Katniss huffs. "What are you doing here?"

"Sit down. I was just going to get us some walnut bread," Peeta says invitingly.

"No, don't feed him! He'll just keep coming back," Katniss snarks.

"It's a beautiful day," Haymitch says uncharacteristically. "The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the… beetles are dancing?" Peeta tilts his head curiously. Katniss rolls her eyes. "I don't know, a bunch of cheery crap, okay? Point is- let's eat out."

"Okay," Peeta says slowly. "So… you want to go to the Hob?"

"You're a big boy. Go by yourself," Katniss smirks. "If you get lost ask one of the nice Peacekeepers to help you."

"Don't your parents run some kind of restaurant?" Haymitch asks Peeta.

"No. They don't. They run a bakery. It's a whole different thing," Peeta says emphatically, not at all liking where this is going.

"Whatever. There's food there." A slanted smile crosses his face. "Unless you think your parents wouldn't allow my kind in their fine establishment."

"Don't be an ass," Katniss snaps. She's had enough of this, too. Haymitch is an expert at playing the angles. She shakes her head. That's putting it too kindly. What he really is, is a manipulative bastard with a mile-wide mean streak and a nose for weakness that would do credit to any wolf. Now he's going to guilt Peeta into going along with whatever sociopathic idea he's got stuck in his head this time. Well, what else is new?

"We don't necessarily have to bring preggers," Haymitch says.

"Haymitch," Peeta says, suddenly feeling very tired. Here they go. But for once Haymitch surprises him by abandoning the nascent fight.

"Look, if I'm going to be the kid's 'uncle', it just seems like I should meet the other set of proud grandparents." He grimaces. "Grandparents. Hell, I'm _old_."

"Don't worry, you've still got your looks," Katniss intones sarcastically.

"Katniss…", Peeta says, almost pleadingly.

"Come on, your parents can't possibly be worse than Katniss's mother," Haymitch says.

"Ungrateful swine," Katniss says off-handedly. "Let's do it. This could be fun."

"Promise me you'll behave," Peeta orders, attempting to sound stern even as the two of them metaphorically back him into a corner.

"I always behave," Haymitch calls cheerfully up to him from the depths of pathos.

"I'm serious! You don't know my mother."

"His mother's a mean old cow," Katniss supplies in a stage whisper.

"She's not!" Peeta insists defensively. "She's just strict. She had to be. Raising three boys is more trouble than any woman should have to endure in one lifetime." She's told him so often enough.

"Ooh, think she'll spank me if I'm not good?" Haymitch teases. By this point he's actually curious to meet the old bat. The more irredeemable someone is, the more stubbornly Peeta defends them. He should know.

Peeta blushes bright red. Katniss laughs. "Now we _have_ to go," she says, her eyes sparkling at the thought.

"I'd just like to have it on record that I was against this," Peeta mutters, giving in.

"Noted," Haymitch says agreeably. "Up and at 'em, honey. We're going to get _food_!"

"I'm pregnant, not fat, you surly old drunk," Katniss gripes.

"You're going to have to put on shoes," Peeta reminds Haymitch.

Haymitch looks down at his misshapen feet as though only just now noticing that he's barefoot. "Knew I'd forgotten something…"

Here Peeta would ask him if his feet still hurt, or if he'd been given any treatment for them at all during his most recent week in the Capitol. Except that he can't ask. He can't bring up anything about the events of the final night of the Victory Tour. With everything that's happened to Haymitch, that's the one topic Peeta knows of that's guaranteed to send him into a rage or make him withdraw and barricade himself in his den for a couple of days.

"Would you rather just wear socks?" he asks instead.

"Yeah," Haymitch says without looking up.

"Sit down. I'll get you a pair of socks," Peeta instructs.

Haymitch watches Peeta out of the room, one hand braced on the doorframe in a deceptively casual grip. Only once he's gone does Haymitch steel himself and begin the walk to the nearest chair. He limps heavily, swaying from the outside of one foot to the outside of the other, never letting his misshapen toes touch the floor. For all that, he's not slow and careful anymore. Haymitch has made this painful-looking movement into a regular, unhesitating rhythm. He's gotten used to not being able to walk normally. Katniss watches, thinking that she herself cannot get used to one more thing.

"You need a cane," she remarks, lowering herself slowly back into her chair.

"The hell I do," Haymitch says stubbornly. "It's my toes that got broke, not my goddamn leg." He's _not_ disabled. He just can't run, or walk very fast. Stairs aren't fun either.

Katniss shrugs. "Fall, then."

"Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?" He reaches the chair and lays a heavy hand on it, gripping tightly.

"Don't fall!" Peeta reappears in the doorway with the unnerving suddenness of a spring-loaded puppet. Maybe he was waiting in the hall, monitoring their conversation, waiting for the inevitable cue to swoop in and save the day. Katniss feels a weary self-disgust even as her lips curve in a tiny, mocking smile. It's horrible of her, but she can't seem to stop caricaturing Peeta these days. She really ought to love him. It would be so much better if she could just love him.

Peeta drops two thick pairs of socks into Haymitch's lap and then stands over him frowning like a grim sentinel. "You're getting blisters."

Haymitch looks up at him edgily. "They were blisters a month ago. I'm getting calluses." He drags one ankle up onto his knee and bunches up a sock before pulling it over the end of his foot with a quick tug. "Shit," he hisses quietly, closing his eyes.

"Haymitch-" Peeta starts.

"What? What, Peeta? What the fuck do you want?"

Peeta shakes his head. "I'm sorry." This is because of him. Him and Katniss. Ultimately, though, it's his fault alone. He's Katniss's husband. He's supposed to be her champion, her protector. Haymitch should never have had to save her by himself. He, Peeta, couldn't protect her, and now they're destroying Haymitch piece by piece.

By the look of his feet, he'll be permanently crippled. The bones are knitting back together at angles. Forming spurs, according to Elsabet. Sharp little protrusions where one part of the bone tries to keep growing straight while the other part cants sideways. Those spurs will be the major source of pain by this point. They'll always hurt, for the rest of his life.

He won't let Elsabet set the broken bones. If he lets her treat them Balthamos will see. And Balthamos will break them again and again and again. The lesson is meant to be a permanent one.

"Give me the socks so we can get going before your little brood mare starts eating the draperies," Haymitch growls, brushing the apology aside.

"This is such a terrible idea," Peeta says to himself, surrendering the socks.

"Women were made to bear, and so were you," Katniss retorts icily. Well, thank goodness they're in the den. If they were in the kitchen dishes would be flying back and forth across the room by now.

Haymitch tugs on the other sock with quick, angry motions, wincing as he pulls the thick fabric over his toes. "The second pair, too," Peeta insists. Haymitch obeys without even looking away from Katniss, like Peeta is just annoying background noise.

"Let's get going," he says, propelling himself onto his feet and swaying terrifyingly for a moment before getting his balance.


	39. Widening Gyre

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note 1: Thanks for the follow, Ashley0520! And thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato. I hope you find herein at least some of the things you listed in your too-kind review.

Note 2: This chapter is dedicated to TheOnlyPotato, whose excellent tales help form the legend.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 39**

The evening is incongruously warm and kind as they set out, and Peeta can't help relaxing and smiling as he takes in all that transitory beauty. The sunlight is doing that thing where it guilds everything it touches. Haymitch and Katniss seem to shine preternaturally as they walk along beside him. Peeta thinks their eyes might actually be glowing. They look powerful, nimbused in gold. Peeta wonders how he looks in this moment, and how an observer would paint the three of them as they walk out of the Village this evening. Would they be three pillars of light, latent conquerors all, destined to rise out of all the mud and the blood? Or are there only two warriors in this hypothetical painting, centered and made appropriately prominent so that they can inspire the world, while Peeta strides along in their wake and off to one side as their loyal squire? Is Peeta even in the picture at all?

He realizes he's lagged a few steps behind them while his mind was occupied with these thoughts, and he takes quick steps to come abreast them again. His subconscious knows the answer, anyway.

The ever-present dull ache in his feet forms a thudding counterpoint to Haymitch's thoughts as he watches the kids out of the corner of his eye. He guesses he's really going to do this. Plutarch will be pleased.

Damn Plutarch. This has nothing at all to do with him.

The kids don't need to know about the Resistance. They're seventeen, for fuck's sake. They're idiots, like all teenagers. It's safer for them to know nothing.

But the Capitolites went too damn far. What Bacchus did to him, what that sick fuck Snow arranged to have done to him… It happens again every time he closes his eyes. And when he wakes up with late afternoon sunlight filtering murkily through the curtains that are always closed, he doesn't know how he can make himself get up and face Katniss and Peeta again. He hates the boy for always showing up with his food and his concerned, pitying looks. He hates him for not leaving him alone, letting him hide away in the quiet close darkness, the friggin' _safety_, of two rooms in his torn-apart house. And he hates Katniss for her counter-determination to avoid him completely, her frank admission to him and to herself that she can't deal with what he's become. He hates them. Most of all, he hates himself.

It's traitorous to bring them into the Resistance. Where will this thing he's about to say end up taking them? They'll join. Not a chance in hell that they'll see the sensible path and choose to keep out of it.

They're not like him. They still have so much to protect. They're young, for one thing. Mere cubs, in spite of what they've been through in the past year. Whereas Haymitch is less than a decade shy of finishing up the average lifespan of a citizen of District 12. Having escaped being forced into the mines at the age of eighteen, he probably would have had a few more years than most. But he figures the liquor has more than made up the difference. His own life would have been almost at an end even if the sick, crawling, dirty bastards hadn't guaranteed that he'll end it himself as soon as the kids are safe. Katniss and Peeta are practically _children_.

If the Resistance really does get them out of here, they have time to get past all this shit. Peeta will take care of Katniss when he's gone. Haymitch thinks that, given a fair chance, Peeta could still fix everything for the girl.

For another thing, they're not ruined and rotting from the inside out. Haymitch can smell the rot on himself in the mornings when he wakes up in the Cell and looks around blearily to see if maybe he vomited at some point during the nightly horror show. Usually the sheets are cleaner than they have any right to be, but the smell lingers heavily in the too-lavish bedroom; he sits up shaking and dizzy and sometimes he makes it to the bathroom before throwing up and sometimes he doesn't. One of the johns must have given him something is all he can figure, some extra little gift along with the usual hateful thing they give him. It shouldn't be possible. STDs are supposed to have been extirpated within the Capitol, and he'd been vaccinated against all of them before his very first appointment. But they must have forgotten one. He can feel the rot moving through him sometimes, reaching tendrils up into his chest. He hopes it's something highly contagious and incurable.

Katniss thinks she's ruined; he can see it in her haunted eyes and the set of her features. But if nothing else happens to her, he's pretty sure she'll recover. Women almost always take to their offspring, even if the circumstances are just plain shitty. Almost none of the women in the Seam can actually _afford_ children, and some awful number like one in three of the little brats don't even make it to their fifth birthday. Haymitch used to wonder why the women didn't seem to grasp this, why they kept allowing themselves to become pregnant regardless of their impossible situations. Condoms are contraband in the Districts, and the ones made of animal intestines and sold in the Hob are imperfect protection at best. But still, surely all the children born each year couldn't be accounted for by men who lacked either the self-control or the common decency to pull out before coming?

He'd understood that part of it a little better when he'd grown up a bit and gotten a bit of experience. And he's pretty much convinced now that, yeah, all those poor women are the unlucky victims of accident or selfishness. He can see that. But still, they invariably seem to love the little parasites thus forced upon them. His own mother had loved him and his little brother, before he'd killed them both.

Since the baby growing in Katniss's belly is pretty damn unlikely to kill her and starvation is never going to be a threat to her again, she'll almost certainly fall in love with it as soon as it drops out. And sheer cussedness is the only possible reason she hasn't fallen for Peeta yet. He'll wear her down eventually.

Or maybe not, because what he's about to tell them will probably get them killed. And for what?

Vengeance. They'll pay, damn them. Recruit Katniss and Peeta to the Resistance? He'd recruit the whole damn district, starting with old one-armed Ripper, if it would bring him one step closer to killing them. You can't _do_ that to people. You can't do that and then leave them fucking alive to wake up with it every goddamn day.

The path is taking them through the thin, sparse band of pine and fir now. They'll reach the Town soon. Time to either jump or climb down. Haymitch slows his steps, his mind swaying queasily back and forth.

"Let's stop for a minute," Katniss says unexpectedly. She's breathing rather hard and has one hand braced under her enormous belly as if it's some disconnected burden she's carrying with much difficulty and not a little resentment.

"Yeah, of course," Peeta says immediately. He looks around for somewhere to sit her down, a flat rock or a tree stump or maybe a bed of fresh pine boughs that he could quickly festoon with daisies and buttercups. Haymitch's lip curls in a sardonic smile. Then he jumps as a heavy hand grips his arm.

"Hold still," Katniss huffs impatiently. She uses his arm to steady herself as she sinks to the ground with exquisite care. Releasing him, she leans back against a tree trunk with an unconscious sigh.

Peeta drops down beside her and Haymitch grudgingly sits on her other side. They're quite alone. This path leads to nowhere except the Village. Unless Elsabet and Prim happen to choose this evening for one of their frequent visits the three of them could probably sit here in perfect isolation all night, disturbed by none except their respective demons.

Between the trees the evening sky shows the dark blue-purple of approaching sunset.

Haymitch reaches out and nudges Katniss's arm, and she turns on him gray eyes that are curious and brighter than anything left in the day.

"Do you still want to fight?" he asks her.

"Can we fight?" she asks with sudden sharp intensity. "Tell me how."

"What are you two talking about?" Peeta asks, masking a growing sense of worry behind a light tone. "Give me a second to get my decoder ring out."

"Killing Snow. That's what we're talking about," Katniss says seriously, not looking away from Haymitch for even a second. "Haymitch has thought of a way. Haven't you?"

"Kind of," he hedges.

"We're going to do it. Whatever it is. Whatever the consequences," Katniss declares in a tone that forbids argument.

"Alright, Haymitch. Tell us," Peeta says in a tight, accusatory tone that makes Haymitch wince a little.

"Listen, you don't have to be part of this," he tells them. "Neither of you have to."

"Don't tell us we don't have to," Katniss says fiercely. "We have just as much in this as you do." She glares at him until he looks away, hating her a little for making him do that.

"And you, Peeta," she says, turning on him. "Didn't you promise to kill him for me?"

Haymitch gives Peeta a surprised, speculative look.

"Not you," Peeta says uncomfortably. "Snow."

"Well, rah-fucking-rah," Haymitch drawls with a cruel twist to his lips. "And while we're all waiting for _that_ to happen…"

"You really are an ass," Peeta mutters, blushing.

"Yeah, I really am." Haymitch looks at Peeta and tries to form the words to apologize. "It's a damn fine sentiment, Peeta. It's just-"

"What's your idea?" Peeta interrupts, already justifying, excusing, and filing away Haymitch's taunt in one of the full-to-bursting folders with headings like 'He's Had Too Much To Drink', 'It's Only A Defense Mechanism', or the ever-popular 'He's Damaged.'

"There's an organized Resistance movement," Haymitch tells them, here in the trees, while part of his mind loops back to Plutarch saying these words to him in that ridiculous hotel room. Sitting too close to him on the round bed with the mirror mounted above it. Drugs and sex and those damn condescending eyes.

"What's their goal?" Peeta asks.

Haymitch snorts. "I think the ultimate objective probably involves crowning Plutarch Heavensbee as our new king and then going forth to expand his kingdom crusade-fashion." He puts a hand to his mouth, widening his eyes in burlesque dismay. "Well, now I've gone and blown his cover. Oops."

Katniss is looking at him, uncertain if he's really joking. "Long live the king," she offers, and he inclines his head to her with a bitter little smile.

"Not really, right, Haymitch?" Peeta questions.

"The ostensible goals are the overthrow of Snow's government, Snow's capture and execution, and ending the hunger Games," Haymitch allows.

"What would we have to do?"

"Hold on, there. You can't tell anybody. Not your parents, not your respective brothers and sister." He points a stern finger at Katniss. "_You_ can't tell Gale Hawthorne."

"Gale hasn't spoken to me in seven months," Katniss says flatly. She's Peeta's, now. His claim became irrevocable when he put the baby in her. So much for friends, right? There's no such thing, not really, not when it matters. "So what do we _do_?"

"Don't know," Haymitch admits. What will Plutarch want them to do? He has a vision of Katniss crouched on top of a building with her bow, carefully sighting on a figure below. Maybe even Thread. Real nice picture, right up until the rest of the Peacekeepers find her and drag her beaten body through the streets to the scaffold like a pack of dogs with a not-quite-dead fawn. But what's the sacrifice of one teenage girl against the ever-loving rebellion? He can _hear_ Plutarch, dressed again in his rich clothes, sipping a drink before heading out to his waiting car, talking about sacrifice like he understands the word.

"Great. Well, thanks a bunch for recruiting us," Katniss snaps. "Do we at least get membership cards? Is there a secret handshake? Do you have vows for us to sign in blood?"

"Calm down," Peeta requests softly.

"I don't control any of this, okay?" Haymitch says edgily. "You should have figured that out a long time ago, honey. I just do whatever the hell Plutarch tells me to do. And I fucking hate him! He's just another goddamn Capitolite prig who thinks the sun shines out of his ass. But I gotta figure he's better than Snow, so I'm backing his so-called Resistance." He lapses into brooding silence for a moment. "You might as well know that's where your orders will come from, too, if there are any."

"If there are any?" Peeta repeats.

"For now the only orders are to lie low. Don't do anything that might attract even more of Snow's attention than you've already got focused on you."

"Stay alive?" Katniss says, rolling her eyes and visibly slumping. "Some Resistance. Come on, Peeta. I'm ready to go now." She begins levering herself up from her seat at the base of the tree, hissing something distinctly non-maternal and ignoring Peeta's extended hand.

"Well, heaven knows that you know best," Haymitch sneers, pushing splayed hands against the ground and rocking to his feet in a too-practiced move. "You've certainly improved _my_ life to no end."

Katniss closes her eyes and holds up a hand. "Just be quiet for a few minutes, Haymitch. I'm envisioning Peeta's mother spanking you. Don't ruin this for me."

Haymitch gives her a sarcastic laugh. "We're all really impressed down here, I can tell you. Lead on, Katniss."

The red-brick façade of the bakery looms up out of the gloaming like a huge animal caked in dried blood. Within the animal, driving it ever on, dwells Peeta's mother. She'll be washing dishes or peeling apples for filling or stirring raisins into the warm, good-smelling mix of ingredients for her special cinnamon raisin bread. But really she'll be watching, always watching, through walls and through doors and around corners. And even if she's sprinkling freshly ground dill into a bowl of chicken salad she'll have her heavy old rolling pin within easy reach. Unless she's at the ovens. Then it'll be the burning hot spade she uses to fetch out the bread.

Peeta does a quick mental check: Is he dressed neatly enough? All buttons buttoned, not too many wrinkles? Did he remember to comb his hair? He has a sudden bleak certainty that he forgot. And what about Katniss? Will she pass inspection? Peeta casts a look at Haymitch, at his shambling walk that makes him look falling-down-drunk even though he isn't (at the moment) and his lank, unwashed hair and his crumpled shirt with too many buttons undone at the collar. His eyes finish up on Haymitch's feet, catching there and getting stuck. No shoes! And the once-white socks are positively stiff with dirt and muck. He's filthy.

Katniss nudges him hard from the other side. "What's your problem?" she demands in a flinty voice.

"Don't worry. You can just tie me to a post outside while you and Katniss have dinner," Haymitch mutters, all thick stone walls and high battlements. "I'll meet your mom when she brings me my dish of water. Give her a good sniffing over, maybe a few licks." He's furious with himself for caring about Peeta's judgmental look.

"Don't be so dramatic," Peeta says shortly, feeling once again under siege from both sides. He doesn't care about Haymitch's unkempt appearance (or if he does, a little, he can understand the reasons for it). But his mother certainly _will_ care. They just don't understand. They don't bother to try to understand. They've tapped back into their little private wavelength, and it's like they might just as well be passing notes to each other, paper airplanes flying back and forth just out of Peeta's reach. Whatever he says will be wrong because they're already two or three steps ahead of him in the conversation.

"Screw it," Haymitch says, hunching his shoulders. He turns back, starts to shamble back towards the cover of the trees, head down. He's never been the kind of person you'd want to introduce to your family, not since the Games; even less so, this past year. Peeta's so fucking _nice_, he guesses he just kind of forgot that for a little while. That assessing, embarrassed, faintly irritated look, like he's a mongrel dog and Peeta's trying to decide if he can be trusted not to piss on the floor… A low growl escapes him, and now he even sounds like a goddamned dog and that pisses him off even more.

"Hey," Katniss says, and he turns startled, red-rimmed eyes on her, realizing for the first time that she's striding along beside him.

"What."

"I'm hungry and I'm tired. I'm seven months _pregnant_. Stop being a selfish, sulky little kid, and let's go eat," she demands.

"So go eat," Haymitch growls, stopping and turning to face her. He can read between the lines, knows that following him is her way of proving she's not embarrassed. She's declaring sides in this shitty little drama that shouldn't ever have happened anyway because he _knows_ better. He even knows that she ordered Peeta to stay where he was, knows that without having to glance back at the boy abandoned on the path. So he stops and gives her his attention, resentfully and almost unwillingly.

"Unbelievable," Katniss mutters to no one in particular, rolling her eyes. "Is this how all men are? This crappy, obsessive need to make everything about themselves, is this _normal_? Peeta's maybe too young to know better, and you're a hopeless drunk, and my dad- well, he's been dead five years, and I was only eleven when he died, so who knows? I'm really, really hoping you're not representative of what all men are like when they grow up, because I was hoping for a bit more from my friggin' _husband_, as soon as his hormones settle down a bit. Can you give me any hope at all?" She glares up at him from less than two feet away, unflinching, daring him to respond.

"Where's your horse?" he asks her flatly.

Katniss huffs impatiently, not even bothering to ask, just letting him get on with it.

"Speech like that ought to be given from horseback so you can look down on the sorry son of a bitch you're haranguing. At the very least it shouldn't be given by a tiny little thing like you. That was kind of cute."

"Come on. I'm going to introduce you to Mrs. Mellark myself. I can't wait to see what kind of tantrum you throw when _she_ looks at you."

"_Tantrum_-," Haymitch starts indignantly, but she's already walking back down the path towards Peeta. He'll have to follow them if he doesn't want her to have the last word.

Katniss hustles Peeta along towards the bakery in double-time, and he'll be damned if he's going to run after them (damned if he could). Haymitch narrows his eyes at their retreating forms, lengthens his stride for two steps before he feels his foot hit wrong, too much on the toes, and he stumbles before falling back into the steady shambling gait he's had to teach himself. "Bitch," he says very softly to Katniss's retreating back, and there's more than a touch of wry admiration in his voice. _Manipulative_ bitch. He resigns himself to following them right into the bakery, a half-smile settling over his features. He'll get his own back.

Haymitch pushes open the glass door (a bell tinkles over his head, shrill and frantic as one of those mean-spirited little Capitolite purse-dogs) and the kids are already standing there in front of a long, polished counter and talking to a thin, pinch-faced woman who must be the mean old cow herself. Smiling broadly, Haymitch lurches forward and shoves himself between the kids, throwing an arm casually over Katniss's shoulders. "Honey, you didn't tell me this place had a bar!"

Peeta gives him a wide-eyed _please_-_behave_ look that he might just have heeded were it not for that other look that he remembers with such unhealthy vividness. As it is, he smirks and says to the woman, "You must be Mrs. Mellark! I've heard just so _much_ about you." Here he flashes Peeta a burlesque questioning expression, raising his eyebrows and darting his eyes from Mrs. Mellark to Peeta and back again, a real unmistakable she-doesn't-_look_-batshit-crazy pantomime. Mrs. Mellark looks at Peeta, too, and her features tighten even more.

"I'm Haymitch," Haymitch continues his cheerful rampage. His arm is still draped over Katniss, and he's surprised she hasn't shrugged him off yet. But since she hasn't… "You probably know me from the Games- I'm very, very famous- but Katniss and I are friends from way back. Fatherless girls, you know how they look up to older men. Let's just say _mentoring_ Katniss here was nothing new, right, honey?"

"More like having a little brother than a new father," Katniss says in a long-suffering tone. "But he _did_ show me a few things." She gives Haymitch a conspiratorial smile and lifts his arm off her shoulder in the gentle, affectionate way of two people who have known each other long and well. She nods towards Peeta. _I'm with him, now. Behave_.

"No more than you showed me." Haymitch guesses they're messing with Mrs. Mellark; Katniss has a bone-deep dislike for the woman, so much so that there must be a story there. But the deep flush suffusing Peeta's cheeks is a nice bonus.

"They aren't serious, mom," Peeta says.

"Don't interrupt, dear. Adults are speaking," Mrs. Mellark chides without looking at him.

A teenaged boy hovers behind the counter, blond hair brushed back, wearing a neat dark green apron. He regards the three Victors with bright lively interest, but he clearly knows better than to say anything. It's a speak-when-spoken-to sort of household, no doubt about that.

"Who's this?" Katniss asks. "I thought I'd met all of the Mellark boys."

"Not a Mellark," Peeta answers, looking uneasily at his mother. He doesn't say anything else. She might just take the rolling pin to him in front of Katniss and Haymitch. She's done it in front of customers a couple of times, just a single 'mind me' sort of whack.

"That's Lennor," Mrs. Mellark tells them. "We took him in to help with the shop after Peeta left us. Poor boy, his parents really had more children than they could afford. The Lumms, if you remember them, Peeta? They make and sell coats and such in that shop on the east side of town." Mrs. Mellark favors the teenager with a self-righteous little smile. Lennor fidgets briefly before composing himself and fixing a blandly pleasant expression on his features. "He took our last name, of course. Lennor Mellark you are now, aren't you, dear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Lennor acquiesces, blandly and pleasantly. The eagerness to meet Katniss and her fellow celebrities is gone now, and he regards them with the polite disinterest applied to all the other customers who come through the glass door each day.

Katniss look back, troubled and beginning to feel angry. Lennor looks Peeta's age, maybe a year or two younger. And he's hideously embarrassed, using all of his willpower to hide it. He'd wanted to meet the three 'heroes' of District 12, maybe particularly Katniss and Peeta, whom he'd watched fight and triumph against all the odds and everyone's expectations. After this he'll look away and quicken his pace if he sees any of them out on the street. The Lumms' business must be failing, must have essentially died already. So they'd sold a kid to one of the more prosperous merchant families as an indentured servant. It happens sometimes. And the mean old cow had made him change his name and trumpeted it around like she'd done some great selfless act of charity. 'Taken him in', indeed.

"Another brother!" Peeta declares warmly. "Welcome to the family, Lennor!" He thrusts a hand over the counter, and Lennor looks at it in surprise for a second before seizing it and giving it a firm shake. "So. You'd be like, a fraternal twin, I guess?" Peeta continues. "Seventeen, like me?"

A genuine smile spreads across Lennor's handsome features, chasing away the previous embarrassment. It's a complex, rich expression: confidence and a laughing tilt to the whole world, a here's-mud-in-your-eye smile. "Fifteen, actually, just freakishly big for my age," he jokes, not forgetting Mrs. Mellark for the moment so much as dismissing her.

"Oh good, I always secretly hated being the youngest," Peeta replies in kind. "Lennor, let me introduce you to my wife, Katniss, who you might have noticed tagging along with me on one or two occasions during the Games."

"The male ego," Katniss murmurs. "I never cease to marvel."

"And this is Haymitch," Peeta says. "A hell of a Mentor, but just really, really lousy as a big brother. You've no idea. Imagine your own older brother on his most bullying, belittling, asinine day and then multiply that by ten."

"He started trying to abduct me into his family right after the Reaping last year," Haymitch says with a go-figure shrug. "So this assimilation thing must be a family trait. Someday they'll have annexed the entire Town."

Mrs. Mellark's fingers twitch in a distinct grasping motion. "Don't just stand there grinning like a silly fool, Lennor. Take their orders. We close in fifteen minutes."

Lennor cuts his blue eyes at her, starts to say something about it being more like forty-five minutes until closing time, then swallows it back. She will lock up in fifteen minutes tonight, or as soon as these three leave, and the first thing she'll do after that is get her friggin' rolling pin. Months ago, when he first came to this benighted household, he'd been prepared to try to like her. At the very least, he'd been determined to respect her. Now dislike is well on the way to morphing into actual hatred. Mean old cow. Three more years to go.

"What can I get for you?" he asks Peeta.

"I think we'll have a dozen lemon muffins and a slice of rum cake," Peeta says, glancing at his companions. "Anything else, Katniss?"

"No, a dozen should be enough for tonight," Katniss says with a baleful look at her belly.

"Indulge while you can," Peeta tells her.

"Aren't you going to ask if I want anything else?" Haymitch demands.

"Rum cake is the only thing we sell that has liquor in it," Peeta says dismissively. "Since you're too drunk to remember to bring money, just be glad you're getting anything."

"Extra rum on the side," Haymitch demands of Lennor.

"Right away, sir," Lennor says, not giving Mrs. Mellark time to object. The customer is always right, isn't that what she's told him about a thousand times? Well, then.

Mrs. Mellark pans then all with a pinched, grim little smile, her eyes as cold and hard as two marbles.

Lennor returns with two pastry boxes, a smaller one stacked on top of a larger one. He passes a paper cup filled to the brim with rum over the counter to Haymitch, flashing that devil-may-care grin again. Haymitch tips him a wink and downs it at one go.

"I like this place," Haymitch remarks to the general company. "Good beverages, courteous staff… I might just make this my regular place for dinner."

"Thank you," Mrs. Mellark purrs. "Wear shoes next time. I really shouldn't have let you in without them." _You souse_, her eyes add triumphantly.


	40. Treachery

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Warning: This chapter is one of the definitely-not-for-kids ones.

Note: Thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato! The baby will be in the next chapter. And I think I'm still less than a third of the way through writing this.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 40**

Effie's first instructions amount to being an alibi for Haymitch. Plutarch tells her to put in a Patron's Bid, a request to keep Haymitch at her apartment for forty-eight hours before or after his usual week of service in the Capitol each month. Haymitch will use her home as a base, creeping out by darkness to commit his acts of sabotage. If there are any questions of his whereabouts, she's to claim that he was in bed with her at the time. Those who shell out the kind of money needed to 'keep' one of the Victors tend to keep them busy.

So this is it. This is the line of demarcation. If she agrees to this, ever afterward she'll be a traitor to her family, her heritage, and her country. Haymitch is a traitor. Are the children involved, too?

"I can't afford that," Effie says quickly. It's true, she really can't. A three hour appointment now and then is one thing, but it would cost a king's ransom to 'keep' Haymitch.

"Don't worry about that part of it," Plutarch assures her. "We have ways of funding your new luxury that won't make anyone suspicious." He gives the word 'luxury' a distinctly ironic intonation.

Effie looks back at him, stricken and momentarily speechless. If her father could see her now, he'd disown her. Her whole family would turn their backs on her. Her parents, her favorite aunt Nobelle… Do this, and it's the end of everything. You'll be all alone.

"Having second thoughts?" Plutarch asks, and she almost nods, grateful that he understands.

But they'd _lied_ to her! She had always been taught that the Victors led privileged lives, with opportunities and advantages to rival the highest echelons of Capitolite society. She'd been told they applied to be on the List. All along, she'd trusted them implicitly. And all of it had been lies. It's only fair, isn't it, that she practice a little deception of her own?

"No, I'll do it," Effie says. Her voice barely quivers. Plutarch gives her a sympathetic smile that doesn't reach his eyes and lays a warm hand over hers.

From the second Haymitch steps through the door into her apartment, Effie can see his shock. He closes the door and then turns away from her, resting his head against its cool surface. "This damn well better be a hallucination," he says without turning around.

They've done something to his hair, added streaks of glittering gold that offset the lion's mane tawny blond its always been. The diamonds all along his right ear are prominently displayed and his sleeves end just below the bends of his arms, leaving the tattoos fully visible.

"Haymitch?" Effie calls his name tentatively, stepping towards him over the thick carpet.

"When I turn around, you had better not be Effie Trinket," Haymitch warns, an edge of hysterical laughter in his voice. He takes a deep breath, shoulders visibly rising and falling, and then turns to her slowly. They regard each other in silence for a long moment.

"Well, damn," Haymitch says at last. "Hey there, Princess. I'm going to track down Plutarch Heavensbee and dismember him with a dull knife. Want to come along?" There's cold fury in his gray eyes, putting fur on his words.

"Your hair looks fabulous," Effie lies, not knowing how to respond to his words. "Is it permanent?"

Haymitch cocks his head at her. "If you can't say something nice… No, it isn't. Not yet, anyway. Trial period. If the clients seem to like it they'll make it grow in this way, like they did with the 'dumb blond' color."

Effie gives him a relieved smile. "It doesn't really look entirely fabulous," she admits.

"How are you part of this, Effie?" he asks her, waving away the trivialities.

"I'm doing this because of you," she tells him.

"How do you figure that?" His closed off expression warns her to stop there, as clearly as flashing red signal lights.

"The night of the Victor's Ball, after I left the Penthouse, Plutarch found me. He gave me a ride. We talked."

"Oh, he just happened along, did he?" Haymitch sneers. In his mind the machinations that went into everything that happened that night begin to click together with a sound like a latch clicking open, a lid being raised. Let me set the scene for you, sweetheart. It's about 3:30am on the night of the big party. Plutarch, the old spymaster himself, is tooling around in the neighborhood of the Tribute building, the _immediate_ neighborhood. He probably left the ball just a few minutes after Effie did.

He'd known Effie would be along shortly, walking alone down the city sidewalks, upset and just about _begging_ some chivalrous gentleman to come along and rescue her. And if he'd known that, well then, he'd known what was waiting for her back at the Penthouse, hadn't he? A naked filthy whore she'd maybe mistaken for a man before that night. Just the thing to stir up the good lady's horror and pity and put her in the right frame of mind to be pushed into doing something stupid, something fatally stupid.

I'll kill him. Next time he has me in that ridiculous fucking hotel room, he'd just better have his guardian devil with him. I'll slit his goddamn throat, and he'll never know how _easy_ I'm letting him off.

But in the meantime, here stands the one single person in the whole dirty city who ever seemed to get it, even for a second. Effie doesn't know the first thing about being careful or keeping secrets. She won't even know she's betrayed herself until they come for her.

This doesn't make any sense. Of all people, why would Plutarch bring Effie into this? Any rich Capitolite could have provided the alibi for him. Come to that, he wasn't ever aware that Effie was this well-off.

"Listen to me, Effie. You tell him you've changed your mind. I'll just stay here for the 48 hours, and you tell Plutarch tomorrow that you want out. This isn't your game. This'll get you killed."

"I want to do this, Haymitch." Effie looks away, takes a fortifying breath. She smiles out of pure habit, as though a circuit in her well-conditioned brain is tripped whenever any expression incompatible with a sunshine-and-butterflies worldview crosses her face. Haymitch frowns back at her, wondering what the hell they do to them at the Games Academy.

"Plutarch was right," Effie continues with an effort. "All of this has to stop. And I think he- I think the Resistance- is going to succeed. I really think they will." She tilts her chin up. "I don't want the history books to immortalize me as some sort of anachronistic hold-out. If you're going to be listed as one of the heroes of this new revolution, my name's going to be right next to yours." She grins at him, a flash of white teeth and emerald eyes.

Haymitch shakes his head, simultaneously returning her grin and silently calling himself a thousand kinds of fool. "Plutarch will use you and toss you away like a condom."

Effie closes her eyes, wrinkling her nose in delicate, well-bred distaste. "Vulgarity is a mask the ignorant hide behind," she reminds him. "So what are you going to be doing tonight?" She sounds curious and a little apprehensive. Just that. Not shaking-in-her-stilettos terrified, like she should be at the thought of what will happen to her if the Capitol guard catches her lying about her pet Victor's whereabouts.

"I can't tell you that, Effie," Haymitch says, sighing. He's going to have to protect her, too, if that's even possible at this point. At least protecting the kids is straightforward. Effie… holy hell. What's to do? Maybe he can talk Plutarch out of this.

"Oh. Okay." Effie looks crestfallen. "Is it- will you be okay?"

A box lays on the table, and at first assessing glance he had dismissed it as containing some sugary confection- candied fruit or expensive chocolates molded into the shape of flowers. It seems like the sort of thing Effie would have on hand, more as décor than to actually eat. Effie keeps flicking her eyes at it, and for a moment he wonders if her conditioning is so inescapable that she's going to offer him a chocolate rose. A second later he just knows it isn't a box of candy. She's _upset_ about it.

"Is that for me?" he asks, cutting her with his eyes. "Princess, you shouldn't have!"

"Haymitch, it's-" Effie beats him to the table, snatches the box up, and holds it behind her back.

Haymitch stares at her, all of the humor gone from his expression. What he is, officially, is a very expensive fuck toy whose sole purpose for the next forty-eight hours is to pleasure a rich Capitolite. Would they have given his purchaser something to discipline him with? If they gave her a shock wand then they also explained to her how to use it. Then she knows about that part of it, too. Hell, he really isn't human anymore, is he?

"Give it here," he demands in a dangerous tone, advancing on her.

"Haymitch, no. I didn't want it. Balthamos insisted-"

"Damn you, Effie, you give that to me." She's backed against the wall now, looking up at him with rising fear. And that suits him just fine. She's frozen, still holding the box behind her. Contempt rises in him as he looks down at the frightened Capitolite. Giving this one a shock wand is a pretty good joke. She'd be more likely to hurt _herself_ with it. He could almost laugh.

"Give it here," he repeats, using one hand to pin her against the wall and reaching around behind her with the other. "Did you actually think I'd let you use it?" He'd really thought she was different.

He yanks her arm forward and plucks the box from her hand before letting her go. 'Course, she could have Balthamos and his goddamn thugs do it for her. Ultimately taking the box away from her is pathetic, worse than useless. Fighting them only ever brings more pain and humiliation. But fuck's sake. It's _Effie_. Feeling hopeless and very tired, he simply stands still and stares at the box in his hands.

Effie, meanwhile, stares at him, still frozen in shocked silence. She's the first to move. She smoothes her skirt, pats at her wig, and then crosses deliberately over to a sapphire-blue divan. Its color matches her wig perfectly. She sits down, crosses one ankle over the other, and bursts into tears.

Startled, Haymitch drops the box to the floor. It pops open, revealing a dozen or so syringes tucked into individual holders on a bed of black velvet. Red and purple liquid, not bubble-gum pink. And anyway, _he_ has the boosters.

"What the hell is this?" Haymitch asks rhetorically.

Effie doesn't reply. She's crying in soft, breathy, heart-broken little sobs. It's exactly how he would have expected her to cry.

"Damn it, Effie," he says. He hesitates, wavering, and then gives up and goes to her. Sitting down beside her, he puts a hand on her arm. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" The stupid thing about it is that he _is_. When did she get that kind of influence over him?

"You _beast_," Effie whimpers, slapping his hand away. He almost laughs, and that's pretty fucked up, too. Never mind. If this goes on long enough he pretty much has to hit upon the appropriate reaction to Effie crying and a box of unknown drugs setting on the floor.

"Yeah, that's me," he agrees quietly. "Bloody damn awful, aren't I? Come on, Princess, stop crying. You'll wreck your make-up."

"Like you care," she says, sniffling. "He told me you could be violent, but he said it was only when you first woke up."

Haymitch snorts and sits back from her. "That was really your idea of 'violence', wasn't it?" It's hard for him to wrap his mind around what that would be like, being that insanely sheltered and naïve. He nods towards the box and its contents. "Sedatives?"

"Tranquilizers. And uppers. Purple to go down, red to get up." She looks up at him with over-bright eyes. "I wouldn't have used them. I just didn't want you to see them. I didn't want you to get upset."

"Tranquilizers and uppers. Well. They're not taking any chances, are they? Did he give you anything else?"

Effie shakes her head. "But he insisted I dose you whenever we weren't occupied. He told me you've hurt people. How violent _are_ you?" She'd never thought of Haymitch as being dangerous before, not once in the last nine years. Nine years, and over a dozen nights she's shared his bed, and he's never hurt her before. Is it even possible that he's gotten so bad so quickly that it's not safe to fall asleep beside him unless he's drugged into unconsciousness?

She knows he's a killer, but she'd always thought him as safe as all the other Victors. He might possibly savage some District woman if he got into a bad state and she was too unwary to get away from him. But that's on a whole different plane from menacing a Capitolite.

Effie rubs at her wrist, again feeling his fingers wrapped around it like bands of iron as he'd forced her arm towards him, the cruel half twist he had given it to make her let go of the box. She'll have bruises there for certain. And all the time his other hand casually pinning her to the wall, the sheer brute strength of that weight resting on her, taunting her with how much damage he could do if he ever did turn on her. She takes in the new hardness in those gray eyes, the _emptiness_, and she can't help but think of certain pictures she saw in history books when she was a child attending the little ones' school. People used to keep dangerous predators as pets, used to actually allow then into their homes completely unrestrained. Many of them had borne some relationship to modern dogs. But these had been many times larger, as heavy as a full-grown man. Monstrous things, with broad flat heads and big rolling eyes and gaping maws with lines of drool running from dagger-like fangs. Madness, to trust such a creature.

Dismay, anger, despair, amusement, anger. Katniss is pregnant, but he's having the mood swings. What a cosmic joke.

If she's scared of him, it apparently hasn't occurred to her that she ought to _move away_. Haymitch shakes his head. No survival instincts. She won't last two weeks. And the trouble is that she can't imagine anyone really hurting her.

Casually, he pushes her down onto the divan. She goes over with absurd ease, giving voice to a surprised "oh!" Then she's flat on her back, one leg hanging off awkwardly. He climbs on top of her, bracing his hands and knees on the divan, not touching her- yet. Looking down at her, he cocks his head and waits to see what she'll do now.

"Haymitch, what-" She pushes against his chest, tries to roll out from under him. But she's still giving him that startled look, that incredulous look. Violence is theoretical, that look says. We're in the Capitol, and violence is just something that people used to have to worry about in the Dark Days. Or maybe: Violence is having someone take away a box that you're not ready to let go of yet.

Close, Effie. So close. But no cigar, my painted love.

"Uh-uh," he says, pushing her back down and holding her there. He runs a hand down her throat, ivory and almost satin-like in its perfect smoothness. Down her upper chest. Down to the bodice of her pretty blue dress.

Effie's hands come up and he makes a snap decision to let her scratch him or slap him or whatever she's going to do. He deserves it, no doubt he deserves it. Mostly because he could do _it_, the bad thing. Part of him wants to do _it_. Show her what violence is.

He can see why they like this, gods help him. Her chest flutters under him as her respiration speeds up. He can see the pulse beating in her neck. He could be in her in four quick movements: his pants, her skirt, her panties, penetration. And she couldn't stop him. She might scream and cry and struggle, but she's helpless.

To hell with him.

Effie's hands land in his hair, and she twists her fingers through it. Then she pulls his hair, a quick tug that doesn't even hurt. "Get off me this instant!" she commands in a breathless voice.

"I hate it when you play with my hair," he tells her, bending his head to whisper it in her ear like a secret. "I always have." He lowers himself, letting her feel him, and her eyes close briefly at the contact. "I could do it, Effie. I could fuck you right here on this pretentious little couch, as hard as I want and as long as I want. I'd hold you down the whole time, and you'd know you were nothing but a toy for me. And when I was done I'd leave you sore and bleeding and wanting to kill me and then yourself. And then, you and I could talk about 'violence'."

Effie's breathing is audible at this point, almost gasping. "You wouldn't," she whispers. Her pupils are dilated, and she can't tear her eyes from his.

Haymitch considers that as he undoes his fly and pushes down the front of his briefs to release his cock. Three more movements…

"You should never have gotten involved in this. You're going to get hurt. I told you that, but I get the vibe that you ignore a lot of what I say." He pushes her skirt up, breaking eye contact long enough to look down. Blue satin panties. With a rabbit made of white lace on the front. _Fuck._

Haymitch takes a deep breath and forces his eyes back to hers. "So- you ignore what I say. Right. Fair enough. The boy says I'm overly dramatic, or some shit like that. But- and you want to listen up good this time, Effie- you're going to get _hurt_." He hooks two fingers into the waistband of her panties, eases them down a little, lets go. Damn, he really wants to.

"Haymitch, you-" Effie doesn't seem to know how to finish the statement.

"Beast. Yeah, I know." Haymitch gets up, abrupt and clumsy now. He tucks himself back in, which is uncomfortable as hell but he can deal with it for a few minutes. "You're right. I wouldn't. But that's the very least of what's going to happen to you when they catch you. That, times ten." He takes in her beautiful (and damn hot) disarray, then jerks his heavy gaze away. "Just for starters."

Effie props herself up on her elbows and just looks at him with her skirt still flipped up. The image stirs a queasy mix of feelings in his rattled mind: lust, stark terror at what's in store for her, and an undeniable if loathsome regret. He _could_ have. He turns away and heads for the bathroom.

"Haymitch?" Effie's voice arrests him.

"In a minute. Gotta take care of something," he tells her over his shoulder.

"Why don't you?"

He turns back to her, impatient and starting to be pissed all over again. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's unseemly to tease a lady so," Effie tells him, a touch imperiously. "You leave me in a most undignified position."

It takes a second, but then it clicks. Haymitch smirks. "A little hot and bothered, Princess?"

"I won't sully my hands when you could easily take care of a situation you deliberately created," Effie huffs.

Striding back to her and unzipping his fly again, Haymitch says, "Actually, I was trying to put a scare into you. Effie has a kink for being held down. Who'd've thought?"

"I must admit I was a bit scared. But, I guess, it kind of gives me thrills to wind you up."

"Nice." It's no more messed up than anyone else in their world. "Lose the rabbit."

"I will _not_. Surely a big strong man like you can manage that just fine without my help," she retorts with an admirable attempt at primness.

"Well, I guess so." On top of her again, he slides his fingers under the waistband and gives it a hard yank. The panties tear neatly along the right side seam.

"Those were-" Effie begins, and he stops her by capturing her mouth in a deep kiss while ripping the other side and tossing the torn garment on the floor.

"Do it," Effie demands the instant their lips part. "Now."

He brushes his fingers over her center, dips two of them in.

"Haymitch," Effie whines. "Teasing. Stop it."

"Okay, okay," he pants. Bracing his hands on either side of her head, he slides into her in one long movement. His eyes close. Bliss. Damn, this is too good.

"Hold my wrists down," Effie demands.

"Bossy woman," Haymitch mutters, pinning her wrists.

"You love it," Effie retorts.

He moves in her steadily, a little roughly, rasping his tongue over her throat and her clavicles and back up to her ear. He hasn't felt this good since-

He's never felt this good.


	41. Hearth

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 41**

Rue is kind of amazing. She has bright blue eyes and a thatch of glossy dark brown hair. For the moment she's relatively quiet, lying upon her white satin sheets in the safe haven of her bassinet. A plush rabbit lies within her reach, one of the hundreds of gifts sent from the Capitol. She's ignoring it. Good girl, Haymitch silently praises her.

"The rabbit seems to be her favorite," Peeta says from the other side of the bassinet. He's smiling down at his daughter with that look of wondering happiness- again.

"Good to know. I'll add it to the book," Haymitch deadpans. Nine days he's been here, and he probably _could_ put together a book comprised of the unending flood of trivialities Peeta has told him in that time. And judging by the crates of gifts and cards and the hovering TV crews, it would do quite well.

"He's like that with everyone," Peeta confides to the baby. Rue looks from side to side and waves her tiny fists.

"Hey, want to hold her?" Peeta asks suddenly, looking up with an excited smile like it's the best idea ever.

"I'd drop her," Haymitch says flatly. His hands are tucked into his pockets, and he makes no move to withdraw them.

Peeta looks disappointed for about two seconds, as though he suspects Haymitch is mulishly refusing to acknowledge the obvious perfection of his daughter. Then the smile comes back and he gathers the tiny infant into his arms. Rue makes a gurgling noise that might indicate happiness. You will learn, Haymitch thinks grimly.

"Can you say 'hi' to your Uncle Haymitch?" Peeta coos at the two week old girl.

"Where is Katniss?" Haymitch interjects in a strained tone of patience.

"I think she's in the kitchen." This answer is delivered in an annoying sing-song. Haymitch heads for the kitchen before he says something he'll regret.

He doesn't understand why Peeta keeps shoving the baby in his face. The boy is obviously smitten, which is a lucky thing for the kid. Katniss ranges from cool ambivalence to guarded affection, and it's painfully clear she has no idea what to do in either mood. If it weren't for Peeta, Elsabet would undoubtedly be raising the kid. But at least Elsabet would have better sense than to expose a baby to someone like him- a drunken Capitol whore with mutilated hands.

He keeps his hands hidden when Rue's in the room. In spite of himself, he doesn't want her to be scared of him.

The kitchen is pleasantly warm and smells of cinnamon and apples. Two pies are cooling on the counter, and Haymitch wrinkles his nose at them in passing. He drags out one of the high-backed chairs around the long table and sits down, pulling a silver flask from his pocket.

"Well, isn't this just a picture of domestic bliss," he says, smiling lazily.

"It was, until you skulked into it," Katniss replies.

She and Prim are at the sink, Katniss washing dishes while Prim dries them and sets them neatly on an orange hand towel spread over the counter. Prim jumps a little at his voice and then very carefully and thoroughly dries the glass in her hands. After an uncomfortably long pause she says, "Hi, Haymitch."

"Good evening, Prim," Haymitch intones, wondering which particular reason this girl has latched onto for being afraid of him. Is it the decaying ghoul he had been that day last winter when the kids had dragged him back here? Is it the glittering white roses spreading across his hands and wrists like some grotesque fungus? Considering that it's Prim, is she maybe just afraid of all men that she doesn't know well?

It's no treat for Haymitch to be around Prim, either, although it's not the girl's fault. She's so overtly fragile in the way she talks and the way she moves. The first thing that always comes to his mind when she speaks to him is how close she came to being just another name on the long list of kids he's killed. He's killed four twelve year olds (four _so far_), and their faces are etched into his memory by a corrosive acid bath of guilt and pity and self-hatred. Oh yes, he would never have forgotten Prim.

Katniss hands Prim the last plate and turns off the faucet. Wiping her reddened hands on a towel, she says, "Peeta managed to stop gawping at the baby long enough to bake cinnamon apple pies." Here Prim sighs loudly and scoldingly, and Katniss ignores her. "I think he intended to give one of them to you. Want some?"

"No, I brought the good stuff," Haymitch says, taking a drink from his flask. "And now that you've finally popped the kid out…" He holds the flask out to her.

"Don't take that, Katniss," Elsabet says sharply, coming into the kitchen. "It will taint your milk." Katniss turns an interesting shade of red and Elsabet tuts impatiently. "Speaking of that, you should go feed Rue. She's only two weeks old, she needs to eat every few hours. And you," she says, turning to Haymitch, "please try to remember that _you're an adult_, and act like one."

"He does the best he can," Katniss says a trifle defensively.

Haymitch rocks his chair back and watches. It's always entertaining when somebody else does his part of the conversation, as though he can't be expected to speak sensibly on his own behalf.

"It's just arrested development," Katniss continues her less-than-stunning defense, smirking at him. "That or massive brain damage from the liquor." Prim giggles in spite of herself, and even Elsabet smiles a little.

"Still hormonal, I see," he comes back at her. "Shouldn't you be nursing a baby right now? Peeta can't do that bit for you, you know."

"Not that he wouldn't give it a try," Katniss mutters sotto voce.

"Really, Katniss," Elsabet says disapprovingly.

"Sorry." Katniss gives her an insincere smile. "Well, I guess I'll go nurse a baby. While he sits here and drinks. Enjoy your drink, Haymitch. Nice being a guy, isn't it?"

"Aw, the kitten has claws," Haymitch jeers softly.

"All men are bastards," Katniss throws over her shoulder in parting, but there's something very close to laughter in her voice.

"Everything going alright, Elsabet?" Haymitch asks, just to make conversation.

He supposes it's time to go back to his own house, now that he's checked in on the kids and ended up alone with the Glowering Woman and the Scared Girl. He's made it over here almost every day since he's been back in 12- five out of nine. Peeta had only had to come get him two of those times. Considering that before Rue was born he could count his visits to both the kids' houses on one hand and have fingers left over, he thinks it's fair to say he's making an effort. Sure. Setting strong foundations, letting Rue get to know her 'Uncle Haymitch'. When Rue is a couple of years older, he'll undoubtedly be her personal version of the boogeyman.

"As well as can be expected," Elsabet answers tersely. "Roses, Haymitch? Whatever were you thinking?"

He tucks his flask back into his pocket, scowling. _Past_ time to go home. He really must be brain-damaged to think Elsabet would endure anything resembling polite conversation with _him_. Bad enough that she's had to deal with the decaying ghoul version.

"Snow is my hero," he sneers in an aggressive tone. "Didn't you know?"

"Haymitch, don't tell her that," Peeta says wearily from the doorway. "They made him get those tattoos," he tells his mother-in-law. "Sometimes the Capitol takes it into their heads to 'fancy up' a Victor in some stupid way. Obviously he hates them, and he's gets a little bit mulish when anyone brings them up."

"Oh. I didn't know that," Elsabet says, injecting a slightly apologetic note into her tone. She certainly isn't going to go so far as to apologize to this forty-one year old teenager who shows up to share his foul-smelling liquor with her older daughter and scare her younger daughter. "So they might do something like that to Katniss at some point?"

"Not that, specifically," Peeta evades, trying to be reassuring. "They never repeat the same modification."

"Plenty of ways to grossly disfigure someone," Haymitch interrupts, his grin positively wolfish. Peeta gives him a quelling look.

"Actually, they wanted to enhance her breasts right after the Games," Peeta says, tripping just slightly on the word 'breasts' as though suddenly rethinking the wisdom of telling this to his mother-in-law. "Haymitch wouldn't let them."

You've got to give the boy credit for trying, even if this part of the 'family' is never realistically going to be friends. If he keeps ramming his head against the barricade of Haymitch's passive-aggressiveness and Elsabet's well-founded reservations, surely it will eventually tumble down. In his own way, Peeta is just as mad as the rest of them. And this is his brand of insanity: he thinks there really will be cozy holidays celebrated together at some point along this primrose path. Haymitch comes within a whisker of standing up from his chair and applauding Peeta's perseverance. But Prim is watching him nervously, so he keeps still.

"Well. Thank you," Elsabet says stiffly.

"You're very welcome." Haymitch over-emphasizes.

"See, now? That was very good," Peeta praises, only half teasing.

"I don't know. I think she could have sounded more sincere. I give it a six," Haymitch says.

"And we're back to obnoxious," Peeta says, shrugging at Elsabet. "Oh, well. We're working on it. Have a slice of pie, Haymitch." Changing the subject, he opens the cabinets and starts taking down plates. "Will you join us, Elsabet? Prim?"

"No, thank you. I'm going to go read for a while. Good evening to you, Haymitch." With that she leaves, Prim following in her wake.

"I think I've just been told to get the hell out, but she was so polite about it that I'm not entirely sure," Haymitch drawls, looking towards the door the woman had exited through.

"Ah, yes, I can see how civility might be hard for you to decipher," Peeta says, setting a plate in front of him.

"I don't like cinnamon."

"Yes, you do. I've seen you eat cinnamon pastries on the train."

"You keep track of which foods I eat? Your whole life's been a rehearsal for fatherhood, hasn't it?"

"I just have a knack for noticing and remembering details. Here, eat your pie."

Haymitch takes a small bite. "Katniss seems more cheerful."

"Yeah, she's brightened up a lot in the last few days. I think she's really starting to warm up to Rue. I was afraid she'd never take to our daughter, at first." He frowns and pushes a bit of apple around his plate. "They actually filmed the birth, did you know that?"

"Did you really think they wouldn't?"

"They didn't have to do that. She's been through so much already. It wasn't enough for those vultures to watch her fight for her life in the arena; they just had to watch _that_, too."

"Yeah, I know," Haymitch says quietly.

And so it goes. This is a normal day for them, now, one of the good ones, where nothing rends new scars into minds or flesh. A day to breathe.


	42. Wheel

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, Bandera! And thanks for your too-kind reviews, TheOnlyPotato! Prim… does seem like the sort to take in stray dogs, doesn't she? She may well be the kind of girl who would grow into one of those 'I-can-fix-him' sort of women who are attracted to the deeply damaged. If so, and if she gets a chance to grow up at all in any of the universes we may dream, may it work out better for her than it does for most ladies of those tastes. She's sweet, and troubled enough in her own right.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 42**

The mid-afternoon sun beats relentlessly down on them as they sit all in a row. The Peacekeepers keep to the back of the stage, a few feet behind them, maintaining the thin veneer of free will.

Katniss cradles her two month old daughter in her arms and looks at the baby so she won't have to look out over the sea of faces. She hadn't wanted to bring Rue onstage for the Reaping. It seems a cruel jape at a helpless infant who will undoubtedly be on this stage for a very different reason at some point. But the Capitolites love Rue. Katniss's defiance in naming the baby she'd been forced to have after her poor murdered ally has sailed right over their heads. As far as she can tell there's been no reaction at all to the name, positive or negative. Rue, the dead girl, is already forgotten, discarded as casually as a chicken bone some spoiled fat man has finished gnawing on. Rue, baby of the Star-Crossed Lovers of District 12, already has her own fan club.

Peeta reaches over and squeezes Katniss's knee, and only then does Katniss realize that she's been sneering down at her daughter with her lip curled in absent distaste. She flushes. None of this is Rue's fault. She strokes a finger through the baby's dark, silky hair in silent apology before whispering to Peeta, "You take her."

Peeta readily lifts the girl into his arms, murmuring, "There, now. There, there." It isn't necessary, though. Rue settles peacefully against his chest without as much as a sniffle. Katniss looks at them and thinks she's more comfortable with her father anyway. She turns her stony gaze on the restless crowd and arranges her features into the old neutral expression.

On her other side, Haymitch regards the corralled teenagers and their milling, anxious parents through a façade of jaded disinterest. He's not drunk this time, only at his maintenance level. It's the boy's fault. Peeta had showed up at his house at 8am this morning and watched him like a self-righteous hawk straight through until his idiot stylist had arrived. He supposes the well-adjusted response to this would be to feel grateful (or _touched_, gods save us) that he left his precious baby in its mother's indifferent care to come look after a goddamn alcoholic prostitute like him.

He watches Katniss whisper something to the boy and then sit stiff as a board while Peeta lifts the baby out of her lap. He and the Fire Girl know the score, and at moments like this he wonders how much longer Peeta can possibly hold out before he gives up and becomes as maladjusted as they are.

On Haymitch's other side, Effie sits and smiles as though she's determined to set an example for the three of them. This is how to look poised and sophisticated and grateful to be here. See, it's easy if you'd only try. Sit up a little straighter, and for goodness sake, _smile_. Haymitch knows her enthusiasm is no more genuine than his indifference. He _knows_ that, but her act is so damn perfect that he's sorely tempted to reach over and goose her.

The mayor of Twelve is standing up now. It must be rather a good day for Mayor Undersee, Haymitch thinks uncharitably. He only has one kid, so his family is safe for another year.

Mayor Undersee strides forward to the microphone and gives it a perfunctory tap in unconscious imitation of Effie. After all, she is a Capitolite. Haymitch scowls and slumps lower in his chair.

"Citizens of District Twelve, I welcome you to the Reaping Ceremony. And let me be the first to congratulate the parents of our brave Tributes, and to wish each of you a Happy 75th Hunger Games." He pauses a brief moment, not expecting applause and not receiving any. "First, we honor our previous Victors." His eyes flick to Haymitch like those of a nervous rabbit, willing him not to make a scene this time. Mayor Undersee takes a deep breath and says with visible trepidation, "Haymitch Abernathy, Victor of the 50th Hunger Games."

Haymitch glares at him sullenly and sinks further down in his chair. This is so fucking ridiculous. Get on with it, you fool. Undersee just stares back at him, beginning to look a tad frantic.

"Stand _up_," Effie hisses out of the side of her mouth, her blinding smile unwavering.

Oh, right. He gets to his feet, mentally cursing Peeta. He hasn't been sober for one of these things in almost twenty years. How the hell is he supposed to know the steps? For a crazy second, he wonders if he's meant to wave.

Mayor Undersee breaks into a pathetically relieved smile and continues: "Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, Victors of the 74th Hunger Games!"

The kids stand readily, Katniss looking resigned and Peeta attempting to exude an aura of calm confidence. With the three of them standing, a smattering of applause breaks out here and there. Katniss is still popular here, still well-liked. These people are eager for a champion; if through some miracle or some mad god one of their Tributes makes it back this year, she'll become a folk hero. She doesn't react, and the applause jangles to an uneven, confused halt. The three of them sit back down.

"And now, it's my privilege to present our escort, Euphemia Trinket."

Effie glides to the microphone and begins reciting her annual introduction. She cues this year's propaganda video at the proper time and watches with the proper degree of admiring attention. The citizens of 12 watch apathetically. Haymitch watches the bit of stage in front of his shoes and lets the glowing words wash over him, words about the glory and honor of being a Victor. Katniss watches the crowd and can't picture them ever doing anything as brave as rebelling, no matter how hard she tries to summon up that vision. Peeta turns his face down and watches Rue, and mouths: _Never you. I promise. Never you._

Then it's over. Effie looks up smiling and shifts into the zone where her words have no repercussions. She's talking, saying the words just like she practiced, not missing a beat, and it's just like singing the lyrics of a pop song by herself in the shower.

"Welcome, welcome to the 75th Hunger Games! And may the odds be _ever_ in your favor. This year we celebrate our third Quarter Quell. To remind the Districts that when a citizen defies the Capitol their families often pay the price of their foolishness, this year's Tributes will be pairs of siblings. All families with at least two children between the ages of twelve and eighteen have a single slip in the Reaping Bowl today." She gestures grandly at the glittering glass orb. "On that slip, the names of two randomly chosen children from that family. And on one of those slips, the names of our two noble Tributes for the Quarter Quell! So, let's get started, shall we?"

Effie approaches the Bowl, floats one perfectly manicured hand down into it, dances her fingers back and forth as though sensing the minute air currents and choosing the perfect place to submerge. Where? And how deep, or how shallow? And just where might your own name wait, that of your brother or sister, that of your son or daughter? Ah, in a moment all will be revealed, but not just yet. No, not just yet…

The fingers dip, brushing aside those on the surface, and a single rectangle of paper is caught and drawn out.

"The Tributes from District Twelve are… Chars and Glenna Voggen! Come on up, Chars and Glenna!"

There's a howl from way back in the audience, beyond the corrals. It's cut off so quickly that it's impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. A ripple of movement becomes visible on each side of the central aisle. Chars emerges first and waits for his sister, grasping the thick velvet rope that lines the path in a white-knuckled grip.

Glenna swims slowly toward him through the other teenage girls, many of whom draw away from her instinctively. It's not definite yet, won't be until she's up on stage. Until then, her dreadful fate might be contagious. They feel deep down that if they touch this walking dead girl they might somehow be compelled to take her place.

She joins him, and they have time to exchange one bleak, disbelieving look. _You? You heard it, too? Then it was us?_ One of the Peacekeepers gives the boy a push toward the stage.

As they mount the stairs and Effie expertly herds them to center-stage, Haymitch catches himself thinking that at least they aren't really young. Not twelve or thirteen year olds, at least. Shit, he doesn't need this. He knows better than to imagine one of them might survive. It wouldn't matter if they were both eighteen. He's had eighteen-year-olds before. These kids are dead. Last year was a fluke, a firestorm.

Effie wraps up the ceremony. She doesn't ask Chars and Glenna to shake hands. A pair of Peacekeepers escorts them from the stage.

"Come on, you three." Thread grins savagely at them as he approaches, his right hand fingering the baton on his belt. "Time to catch your train."

"What about the baby," Katniss says. There's no question in her tone. Her eyes are cold fire. "The baby isn't going to the Capitol with us." The arrangement she'd agreed to was that Rue would stay with Elsabet and Prim during the Games. Rue is _not_ going to the Capitol. If she did one of her fans (or Katniss's fans, or Peeta's fans) might ruffle her hair or touch her hand or breathe on her. Katniss unconsciously clenches her fists.

Thread sneers at each of them in turn. "Tannor!" he calls without taking his eyes from them. One of his underlings scurries to his heel, a stout woman with auburn hair.

"Yes, sir?"

"Take the little brat to Elsabet Everdeen's house," Thread commands, jabbing his closed fist toward the sleeping bundle in Peeta's arms. "Try not to drop it."

Peeta half turns away from Tannor. "I'm not giving Rue to her, or to any of you. I'll take her to Elsabet's house myself. It won't take long. I'll be right back. You can even go with me, if you want."

"You'll hand over the brat as you've been told and you'll get on the train," Thread growls. In one quick movement his baton is in his hand. He tilts his head toward Katniss and Haymitch. "Neither of _them_ is holding anything fragile."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Haymitch swears. Damn idiot kids. He steps over and plucks the baby out of Peeta's arms, ignoring his startled cry of "Careful!"

"Effie, _you_ take her to Elsabet." Effie, looking just as surprised as Peeta was, accepts the now wailing baby that Haymitch thrusts into her arms. It's clear she at least has held one before, though. She shifts the infant around so that it's cradled against her chest.

"The little darling will be fine," she reassures the kids. "I'll put her right into your mother's arms, Katniss." She walks away, bouncing the baby gently as she goes, her movements as graceful as flowing water in spite of the spike heels she's wearing today.

Thread looks briefly furious at being robbed of his sport. "Go with her," he snaps at the still hovering Tannor. "Twelve is no place for a lady to walk alone." Tannor hurries obediently after Effie.

"Get moving," Thread orders.


	43. On the Train

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Thanks as always for your too-kind review, TheOnlyPotato, especially your speculations about how Katniss's relationship with her daughter may develop. That's quite the psychological rabbit hole, and I hope I can do it justice (or at least not hash it up too badly).

**Capitol Nights, chapter 43**

The five of them sit in the lounge car, Mentors on one side of the table and Tributes on the other, and Katniss thinks there's something terrible about looking across the table and seeing a girl her own age watching her with so much dependence. Don't depend on me. I don't know what to do. I can't _help_ you.

Glenna is seventeen. She has striking dark reddish brown hair which she wears cut short. She also has the scrawny, underfed look that's so common in Seam kids.

Chars is fifteen and small for his age. He looks almost as thin as Katniss remembers Prim looking in the months after their father died. His light brown hair stands up in untidy spikes.

"I knew we'd be the ones," Glenna is saying. "I've had a bad feeling about it ever since the Quell was announced. That's why I cut my hair- so it wouldn't get in the way." She looks from one of them to the next.

"Tell us about yourself," Peeta invites. If there's hope here, it's clearly the girl. She's too thin, but not any more so than most Seam kids. And she seems to be taking this well. He himself had been crying when they put him on the train last year. So it isn't at all unreasonable to think that she could make it, right?

Glenna looks at her brother as she collects her thoughts. "Well," she begins, "Chars and I are the oldest of five kids in our family. Both of our parents work in the mines, and I guess this leaves Stuwar to take care of the little ones, but he's only thirteen…" She trails off and looks away, fidgeting with a wrinkle in her skirt and blinking rapidly. "So! Anyway, there's not much more to tell."

"Do you have any talents that might be useful?"

"I'm sorry, I guess I really don't," she says. "I knew this was coming. I should have prepared. But there was school, and there were the little ones, and Stuwar and Chars. And I didn't think-" She shakes her head. "It just got away from me."

"You couldn't have known," Peeta comforts her. "Everyone has had a bad feeling since they announced the Quell."

"Ask the boy," Haymitch interrupts. He has his drink now, and his gray eyes already have that half-mast look to them. Peeta knows that when he stands up to leave the lounge he'll be visibly unsteady. He hadn't thought Haymitch was even listening.

"Ask him what?" he queries tentatively.

Haymitch thuds his flask down onto the table in frustration and immediately picks it up again. "Boy, any talents?"

Chars looks taken aback. "I'm pretty good with animals," he offers.

"Great," Haymitch mutters, leaning back again. He raises his flask in Peeta's direction, and the almost-telepathy that he had formed so quickly with Katniss seems to have finally been extended to Peeta. _All yours, kid._

"I don't think that's going to be very useful in the arena," Peeta ventures. "Don't worry about it, either of you. We'll just have to find out what you're good at when training starts. Why don't you two go get ready for dinner?"

Once they've left the car Haymitch says, "Next time we take Peeta with us, honey."

"Don't call me 'honey'," Katniss says automatically. "Next time we take Peeta."

"What are you talking about?" Peeta asks.

"That day, in the woods. We should have taken you with us," Haymitch says, staring into the distance.

"We didn't think you'd come," Katniss says.

Haymitch nods to her, acknowledging. "Still bullshit that we didn't ask you. I think… it probably would have worked if you'd been there, too." More and more, he thinks that. Because that branch shouldn't have broken. It had been as wide as his shoulders, and rock steady when the two of them were sitting on it. They would have been away, two bats out of hell careening through the night in a final moment of freedom before annihilation. And what would it have mattered, really, if there'd been a third?

Peeta closes his eyes. "I don't need this right now, I really don't. You two are my family, as sad and frigged up as that seems to me sometimes. And if either of you ever try anything like that again, I swear on Rue that I'll have you hospitalized."

"Your husband is a controlling ass, honey," Haymitch says darkly.

"Yeah, I know. But what are we?" Katniss replies. "Sorry, Peeta. We weren't serious. Just gallows humor, a stupid joke. And, Haymitch, don't call me 'honey'."

"Alright," Peeta says. He's grateful for the opportunity to change the subject so quickly. What happened that day in the woods still makes him feel sick to his stomach and light-headed with fear when he thinks about it. "Okay. So how do we do this, Haymitch?"

"You're asking me?" Haymitch laughs.

"Yes, we're asking _you_. There's no one else we _can_ ask. So tell us what we need to do to bring one of them back home," Katniss insists.

"You too, honey?" He gives her a scathing look, then sits back and rolls his eyes at the ceiling. "Take the problem to a grown-up and they'll magically make it all better, right? I don't think I was ever as young as you two."

"_You're_ a grown-up? I never knew," Katniss jeers.

"We don't have time for this," Peeta cuts in before they can really get going. "Look, Katniss and I are living proof that you can save the Tributes."

"Does it hurt, being that stupid? It seems like it should."

Peeta shakes his head, surprised and stung. "Why are you acting like this, Haymitch? What's going on?"

Haymitch looks from one of them to the other. "After what happened last year, do you really think another Tribute from 12 is going to be allowed to win anytime soon? Twelve is going to be one of the districts to bet on this year. I think we'll do well as far as sponsors. We should be able to keep this year's kids from freezing or starving to death or dying of dehydration. And next year we'll be right back where we're intended to be." He gives them a vulpine smile, eyes lambent and feral. "Meat for the bloodbath."

"You really think they'll intercede to keep us from winning?" Peeta asks.

"Snow hasn't forgotten what you two did last year, and there's going to be hell to pay. Those kids have no idea what's in store for them. They'll be lucky to die quickly."

Pale and shaken, Katniss says, "Of course. Yes, of course. He'll make them suffer for our actions while the whole nation watches."

"They'd have died anyway," Haymitch says, watching her. "Katniss, listen. It's not your fault. You couldn't have foreseen this." He stops and looks down at his hands. "It isn't just that, you know. If one of ours won this year, next year we'd be competing for Sponsors with the Careers. I tell you that 12 will never be allowed to do that. No non-Career District has _ever_ had Victors less than eight Games apart."

"But it would shake things up, wouldn't it?" Peeta puts in. "And isn't that what we exist for now, to be a distraction from the real issues?"

"Nice try. They're dead, Peeta. There's nothing we can do for them, apart from maybe making sure they don't suffer too much leading up to their deaths," Haymitch says ruthlessly.

"He'd know, wouldn't he?" Katniss agrees in a small voice. "Clever Haymitch, with his improvisations and his compromises, and his vast and varied _experience_. He'd know."

"Oh, look, my little fire girl is finally growing up. I'm so proud," Haymitch hisses at her.

"We have to try," Peeta tells them both. "Even if you're right and the Gamemakers aren't going to let Chars and Glenna survive, we have to try. You see that, don't you?"

"Yeah, of course we do. The show must go on." Haymitch turns his gray eyes to the window for a minute, watching the fields slide by in the bright summer sun. "I'll work with Chars. You two can double up on Glenna."


	44. Doesn't Matter

Thanks for the review (seems kind of redundant to even give your name, so just thanks)! That said, 'titan'? Oh dear, where was _your_ mind?

**Capitol Nights, chapter 44**

Haymitch reads over the list again, his hand shaking so much that the names wobble in front of his eyes. These are the names of the rich Capitolites who have indicated to Effie that they're interested in sponsoring the Tributes from District 12 this year. It's a much longer list than he's used to. After the 74th Games, 12 is hot. And then there's the Beautiful Young Couple Brought Together by the Games, and the precious and rare Baby of the Victors. He had expected all of that to cause a spike in interest this year.

He starts to read the names again, gets as far as the second, and crumples the paper in his fist.

"What's that?" Katniss asks, startling him slightly.

He opens his hand. "Sponsor list," he says briefly.

"That bad?" she asks, wincing. "What is it, like five people?" She takes in his shuttered eyes and passive aggressive posture. "Less than that, isn't it?"

There had been years when he would have been glad to get five, back when he had thrown himself into the yearly effort to save one of his with clawing desperation. There had been a lot more years, after he'd learned better, when he had gotten himself too numbed up to care and had barely stumbled through the two or three meetings Effie managed to scrape up for him.

"Can I see it?" Katniss asks, and he turns his brooding attention back to her. She ought to know better. He'd thought she was smarter than this. But, no, he can see her mentally buckling down. She's preparing to take whatever scraps they can get and somehow, _somehow_ make it be enough. The Fire Girl is far too much like him for her own (or anybody else's) good. There's a smiley thought to share with Peeta next time the boy gets stuck in caretaker mode.

Last year there'd been eight names on the list. It had been more than 12 had seen in as long as he could remember, possibly a record. Peeta had won them almost all of those eight by the simple act of declaring his love for Katniss on live TV, a spur-of-the-moment move by a scared teenager who thought he had only a few days left to live.

Haymitch lets Katniss take the crumpled ball from his hand, not looking at her as she drops down beside him on the long white couch. He listens to the minute crinkles as she smoothes it out on the low table in front of them.

"Nineteen?" she asks slowly. "All these people want to sponsor our Tributes?"

"Looks like it, honey."

She looks up, eyes hard and shiny, hating that nickname because it's not the other. In a way that's still not clear to her, this affectation of calling her 'honey' is a product of what they've been doing to him for the past year. She hates it, and she hates him just a little for the insidious, back-handed way he forces her to think about this. If he wants to talk about it (her mind shies away from the idea, and it's ridiculous anyway, he doesn't want to talk about it anymore than she does), then she'll try to listen. But this 'honey' business, this passive-aggressive taunting, has gone on long enough.

"Call me that one more time, Haymitch, and I start calling you 'sweetheart'."

Haymitch stands up as quickly as if she'd stuck a pin in him. "I'm out. You and Peeta have fun," he growls, stalking towards the door.

"Have fun with what?" Peeta asks, arriving just in time to almost walk straight into Haymitch.

"We have our sponsor list, and Haymitch is throwing a tantrum because I won't let him call me 'honey'," Katniss supplies, glaring at Haymitch.

"Get out of my way," Haymitch snaps at Peeta. Peeta steps aside and watches the other man walk quickly away down the hall and turn sharply into his room.

"It's hard for him, Katniss," he tries, shrugging. "Sponsors don't care about District 12. The other Tributes are almost always bigger and stronger, and they get all the gifts, and every year he's had to watch his Tributes die. He's really not being any more difficult than he was last year. We just have to be patient until we get used to working with him."

"We've got nineteen this year," Katniss tells him, holding the list out.

"Oh," Peeta says, flummoxed. "Uh, that's a lot, isn't it?"

"That," Haymitch growls, slamming back into the room, "is damn near Career level." He drops down onto the opposite end of the couch from Katniss, liquor sloshing over the rim of his glass and onto his tattooed hand and wrist. "Two through five and… number eleven are mine. You two divide up the rest however you like, or do the damn things together."

"Okay. What are we supposed to do?" Peeta asks.

"Effie will set up the meetings. You two get all gussied up like good little wanna-be Capitolites and-" he mimics Effie's accent and upbeat tone- "tell them why one of our Tributes will be this year's Victor!"

"So basically we have to grovel and lick their boots," Katniss says in disgust.

"Aren't you the clever one, _Katniss_."

"I won't do that," she says tightly. "I hate them. Haven't they done enough to us without forcing us to beg for their scraps like dogs? I won't do it."

"Works for me," Haymitch says, shrugging. "But they don't want me, _Katniss_. And if none of us meets with them, our Tributes lose their sponsorship."

"I'll do it," Peeta intercedes. He studies the list, putting little check marks next to all the names except 2,3,4,5, and 11. "I guess public relations is kind of my department." He gives Katniss a small, humorous smile to let her know he doesn't mind. Then he shifts his eyes to Haymitch. "I might as well do those five while I'm at it. That would give you and Katniss more time to coach the Tributes. Now that there are three of us, we should each focus on what we're good at."

Haymitch considers taking Peeta up on the offer, even though he knows it's cowardly. The last thing he wants is to meet with any of those people, particularly Wenceslas. But… nineteen is a lot, and Glenna isn't a total non-contender.

"No, I'll do them. Those five won't want you anymore than the other fourteen would want me. Anyway, how can it matter? Right, _Katniss_?"


	45. Permanent Damage

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Thanks for the follow, Shinnie! And thanks for the review, TheOnlyPotato!

Warning: This chapter has the hard stuff in it. M-rated. Not for kids.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 45**

Five sponsors. Five meetings. You can do this.

Yeah, piece of cake. I _meet_ with these people every month. He shudders. Well, three of them are women. There's that. Three of them are just unpleasant, degrading sex. While the other two are screaming and smashing mirrors and then spending way too long contemplating the flashy shards of silver glass.

He laughs hollowly. He can top even that. One of them is Wenceslas. Holy fucking hell.

Couldn't he give at least _that_ one to Peeta? Haymitch imagines Peeta sitting alone in a room with Wenceslas. Peeta will be wearing a fancy suit and talking in that humorous, friendly, slightly-self-deprecating way he always talks to reporters. Smile and wave, Peeta. Cute and cuddly. Had that once been his own advice? It had been pretty close. If that's what Peeta heard that day so long ago, he took only minor liberties in interpreting his Mentor's words. But the kid's such a natural at it.

It wasn't meant to last this long! It was meant as a temporary persona, the best he'd been able to do for a boy whose life expectancy had been maybe six or seven more days. Six or seven days if 12 had a _good_ year. Even when Peeta had made him laugh, really laugh in spite of where they both were, he'd known 'likeable' wasn't much of a choice. It wouldn't hold the attention of the Capitolites. They'd laugh and applaud when Peeta spoke, and then they'd send their gifts to the ever-popular 'sexy ones' and the 'natural born killers' and maybe the 'sarcastic one'. His advice was just false hope. He'd felt like a vampire, even while he was laughing.

And Peeta's smart enough to realize that now, even if desperation had blinded him to the obvious back then. The sixteen-year-old boy had been a throw-away to him from the start, a distant second, a distraction from his efforts to save the brave, hard-edged girl. Peeta must know that, and he still bothers with Haymitch. He still treats him like he's some kind of damaged hero, almost. Someone worth knowing. Someone who's not filthy.

Haymitch guesses he can meet with Wenceslas. He'll do that one first. Get it over with, get drunk, pass out in the shower. He knows the drill.

So here he is, in a 36th floor apartment, looking across a gilt and glass coffee table at a man who now features in his nightmares at least once a week. Variety is the spice of life. Oh yes, plenty of variety.

"You hate me, don't you, Haymitch?" Wenceslas asks, taking a sip of his wine and cradling the stemmed glass in his palm. His long, slender fingers wrap around it, thumb ghosting back and forth over the shining surface. Haymitch has never seen anyone play with a glass before, and his eyes are stuck on that thumb moving back and forth.

"I adore how responsive you are," Wenceslas says in an entirely different tone. It makes Haymitch tense and meet his eyes, because he knows lust when he hears it. Especially from this man.

"Yeah," he says in answer to the stupid, gloating, self-indulgent question. A predatory smile touches Wenceslas's thin lips and Haymitch flushes and shakes his head. "I mean, yeah, I hate you," he says in a rush.

Wenceslas stares at him with that knowing smile. His hand drops to the fork of his legs, and he strokes himself lightly through the fabric of his trousers as Haymitch watches.

"I'd fucking kill you if I could," Haymitch growls in a choked voice.

"And yet you love what we do together," contends Wenceslas.

"Like _hell_ I do. Like _hell_. I'd kill myself if I could." Haymitch didn't even notice the downward slide this time. He remembers being tense and disgusted and ashamed when he sat down in the chair Wenceslas pointed him to and accepted the glass of rum. Tense and disgusted and ashamed is pretty much his default mood; it's how he always feels when he's in the Capitol. All that shit recedes a little in 12, becomes background static instead of the all-encompassing miasma that paints his surroundings with sickly witch-fire. It recedes, mostly because of Peeta. Peeta has a way with him, a talent Haymitch mentally compares to the rat-taming ability of the crazy old geezer who lives by the slag heap: sure, okay, you can get the rats to come to you when you click your tongue at them, but why the fuck would you _want_ them to?

The slide, though. From default to shaking and biting his lip and the words tumbling out like sharp rocks, cutting him all to pieces. He can't even control his body around Wenceslas, so he hasn't a hope of controlling his mind or his voice or anything else.

"Posh. I've had you a dozen times. I know what you like. I know what makes you hard. I know what makes you cum."

"Go to hell," Haymitch mutters, low and weak. A flood of funhouse sensations inundates his mind, all of them R-rated.

"Of all the Victors I've had so far, you are the most eager for it. Physically speaking, of course." Wenceslas's pants are tented now, and he stops rubbing himself.

Haymitch tries not to look at that horrible bulge, tries to unknow what it means. A dozen times. Once a month over the last year. So of course he's looking at it. In his head the kids scoff in disgust and Finnick laughs snidely and Chaff tells him that it gets _bearable_.

"Come here, sweetheart," Wenceslas commands. He pats the sofa next to him.

"You can't fuck me. This isn't an appointment," Haymitch protests.

"I'm not going to, even though we both know you want me to."

"I don't. I _don't_. Fuck." Haymitch looks around rather wildly, trying to find something to anchor him in the here and now.

"Come here. We'll talk about the Sponsorship." Wenceslas pats the sofa again, an edge of impatience in his voice.

Haymitch's eyes find the glass doors leading out onto the semi-circular balcony of this 36th floor apartment, and he thinks of escape. Annihilation. Then he bows his head and takes the seat next to Wenceslas.

Wenceslas takes one of Haymitch's tattooed, beglittered hands in his pale ones. "Roses suit you, sweetheart." He languidly undoes his fly and pulls his engorged cock out like some monstrously oversized slug or grub, the kind you find just below the surface of the soil in spring.

Except it's not like a giant grub, it's like a cock, and it isn't until Wenceslas puts his hand on it that the trance snaps and Haymitch jerks away and lurches to his feet.

"Sit down this instant," Wenceslas orders coldly.

"Right. Since you asked so nicely," Haymitch retorts sarcastically. He scrubs his hand on his thigh. "Where do you keep the bleach?"

"It's much too late for you to play the blushing virgin," Wenceslas tells him.

"It seemed like the natural counterpart to your ever-convincing 'perverted freak' bit."

Wenceslas shrugs, giving himself a couple of strokes. "If you don't do this now, it'll be the first thing I'll have you do on our next evening together. There'll be a couple of significant differences then, of course. You'll be on your knees… naked… and you won't be doing it in exchange for a large Sponsorship to help your Tributes."

Haymitch barks a humorless laugh. "You want me to give you a hand job in exchange for a Sponsorship?"

"Stop stalling. It's fast becoming tedious. Either sit down or show yourself out."

Like a giant mutant grub, Haymitch tells himself. Not something you'd ever really care to touch, more something to be smashed with a handy rock (now _there's_ a picture). But… you might, yeah. On a dare, or to prove you weren't some _girl_ who's afraid of bugs.

He sits down, telling himself he might as well get something out of it for once. (Oh, now you want to be paid for it, do you?) Just a grub, that's all.

Wenceslas takes his hand again and guides it to the grub. "Run your fist up and down it. Slowly." He sighs in pleasure as Haymitch obeys. "Rub your thumb around the tip between strokes. Oh yes, sweetheart, just like that." Wenceslas spreads his legs wider, relaxing back into the sofa. "Now, tell me about your Tributes."

Wenceslas is hot and heavy-feeling in his hand as he strokes him over and over. And this is nothing except what it is. The Tributes, then. Focus on the Tributes. Talk about the Tributes, because this is a Sponsorship meeting.

"Glenna and Chars Voggen," he mutters.

"Their ages?"

Seventeen and fifteen."

"Which is which? Roll the foreskin back with your thumb," Wenceslas pants.

"Glenna is seventeen; Chars is fifteen." Surprising, how easy it is to speak coherently about two teenagers while his hand carries on, faltering only briefly with each new instruction.

"And Chars- what does he look like? Details."

"Hell. Brown hair, I guess. Skinny."

"Faster now, sweetheart. Keep rubbing the head. Next time we meet I'm going to fuck you in a hot tub. Have you ever been fucked under water before?"

"No," Haymitch says tonelessly. He's not going to think about it. Not going to imagine the fresh humiliation of being assaulted in a damn _bath_.

Wenceslas begins to thrust into Haymitch's hand. "Faster, and squeeze gently!"

Haymitch feels him tense and tries to take his hand away, but Wenceslas is ready for him. He catches Haymitch's wrist and cums into the other man's palm. "Wipe that anywhere but on your own clothes, and the Sponsorship's off."

Haymitch rests his slimy, sticky hand palm-up in his lap, cupping it so the stuff won't run onto his pants. He couldn't stand that.

"You could lick it up," Wenceslas suggests.

"You can't," Haymitch tells him, not sure what his words mean anymore.

"Then carry it in your hand if you prefer," Wenceslas says, with the air of someone who has grown bored with an exceedingly trivial debate. Haymitch supposes it is trivial.

"I'm going to go freshen up, Haymitch. When I get back, we'll continue our discussion." With barely a look, Wenceslas rises and glides out of the room.

Haymitch looks down at the mess in his palm, watching it glisten as his hand trembles. Soaking into his pores. His hand will smell of it for days. It smells like vomit. He gags, manages to swallow it back, and looks fearfully at the door. He had thrown up, once. Wenceslas had carried out his threat from their first appointment. Haymitch swallows and watches the door and his heart thumps painfully in his too-tight chest.

He lifts his cupped hand as carefully as an Avox balancing a tray of glasses and uses his other hand to haul one ankle across his knee. Then he wipes the mess onto the lower part of his trouser leg. It seems like the only viable option.

"Good boy," Wenceslas says, reappearing with a hatefully triumphant smirk. "Now, to business." He sits down in the chair Haymitch had earlier vacated, the coffee table once more forming a barrier between them. He regards Haymitch in silence for a moment before holding out a wax-sealed pledge. "I want you to use this for Chars's benefit, not that of the girl. Do you understand?"

"Sure," Haymitch acknowledges, just wanting to get out of here, to run from this.

"Don't misunderstand. I do enjoy our time together. But someday, when you go into liver failure, I'll need a replacement. And I find that I've developed a taste for the products of District 12."

Haymitch nods meaninglessly. "Can I go?" That smell. That damnable smell. "Can I go?"

"You're repeating yourself, Haymitch. Yes, you may." Wenceslas stands and steps around behind his chair. His watchful eyes follow Haymitch out the door, and he doesn't move as he listens to the outer door open and close. Wenceslas makes himself wait a couple of minutes for form's sake before he goes out and locks the front door of his apartment. But he waits on his feet, with the chair and the coffee table and the sofa between him and the door leading into the sitting room.

He might end up needing a replacement sooner than he'd anticipated.


	46. For the Saints

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

No warnings, please feel free to skip ahead.

Notes: Thanks for the follow, and of course for the review, Clavain! Kindle? I'm overcome. And more afraid of frigging it up than ever. But I think if a person is trying to create something and they don't worry (or obsess) about that, they're probably making junk anyway.

Thanks, TheOnlyPotato! Too kind, far too kind. But do such things ever turn out as they should? Well, maybe one time in a thousand or so.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 46**

Haymitch comes blowing into the Penthouse like a tornado, broadcasting his violent agitation in psychic howls of rage that cause Peeta to rock back and nearly tip his chair over. Clear on the other side of the room, Katniss winces and drops the notebook she'd been writing in. If Peeta's imagining those buffeting howls, Katniss is sharing his delusion.

"The rest of them are yours." Haymitch limps over to the table and drops a piece of folded cream-colored stationary onto the glass surface. The heavy stock is emblazoned with a set of initials that fill the whole visible side.

He's barefoot, not even wearing socks. And he's rocking on the sides of his feet, like he does at home, like he never does in the Capitol.

Katniss eyes the letter, obviously a Sponsorship, and really tries to make herself pick it up. She can open it, see how much it's worth, and add it to the pile of Sponsorships Peeta's brought her so far. Her part in this. The two men meet with the Sponsors, sparing her that degradation. But she hates even the sight of the letters her compatriots return with, hates what they symbolize. Imagining Peeta begging like a dog at these people's feet makes her want to cry. Damn these ever-lingering hormones. Damn the baby that stewed her brain in them. Damn these men who protect her no matter what she says or does. Them, most of all.

"Haymitch, they won't want to meet with me. If I go, we won't get their Sponsorships," Peeta says patiently, looking at Haymitch's bare, mangled feet in what he probably imagines is a surreptitious manner.

"I don't give a good goddamn," Haymitch snarls. He scrubs his hands on his trousers. "Take a fucking picture."

"What happened to your shoes?"

"My feet hurt. I'm done walking like a damn show-dog."

"Fine. Don't meet with them," Katniss says.

"Katniss, let me handle this," Peeta says. This isn't business for my troubled wife. He doesn't say the last part, but she adds it in his voice. Nothing about Haymitch is business for his troubled wife, as far as Peeta is concerned. If he could send her out of the room whenever Haymitch comes in, she has no doubt he would.

"Haymitch, you don't have to," Katniss says, ignoring Peeta.

Haymitch nods to her, a mere jerk of the chin. "Thanks," he mutters thickly. Head bowed, he retreats from them down the hall into his room.

"Who's the Sponsorship from?" Peeta asks.

Katniss picks up the letter and breaks the seal. "Wenceslas Seisty."

Peeta shrugs. The name means nothing to him.

Katniss is eyeing the last line of the letter: the pledged amount. "Wenceslas is one of the men who pay to fuck him."

Peeta sits back in his chair. "How do you know that?" Haymitch has never mentioned any of his 'clients' to Peeta, not specifically. Certainly not by name. He needs to talk about it, because all of this is way beyond his limited coping mechanisms. But Katniss is only a few doors down from Haymitch on the metaphorical psych ward. They're both inmates of their traumas and burgeoning psychoses. Nothing good can come of them comparing their scars in secrecy.

"I know because Haymitch must have made him really _happy_ to get this much money." Katniss passes Peeta the letter, grateful to no longer be touching it.

"Wow." Peeta looks up at her. "Katniss, we might actually be able to bring one of them home." He looks so hopeful. He's partitioned off the diseased part of this, neatly shut it up in its own watertight compartment. Katniss's partitions are sere as dead leaves on an autumn wind. But she calls up a smile for him.

"Yeah, maybe we could." She gets up. "You stay here."

Katniss pauses outside his door, considers knocking, and then just opens it and steps in. She has no intention of just going away, so why fuck around with him?

He's sitting on the edge of the bed and his head snaps up at her entrance. His hair is mussed and standing up like he had just been running his fingers through it. Or like he'd just been rolling around in the sheets with someone. Katniss doesn't let herself look away, and after a few seconds the urge to do so passes.

He returns her steady regard and quirks a bitter smile at her. "Solidarity, and all. Rah-rah. I get it. Now why don't you just turn around and trot back out to the boy and leave adult business to the adults?"

Katniss rolls her eyes and joins him on the bed because it's the only available seat in this room. She sits beside him, three feet of bedspread that shines like the hottest part of a candle flame separating them. "You're older, we're little kids, you're savvy and jaded and everything and we're making blanket forts and playing house. I get it. I have your bullshit down by rote," she deadpans. Neither of them bother to say anything else for a moment.

"So, what happened?" Katniss asks, presupposing he'll tell her.

"I don't know that you'd understand if I told you, honey." Katniss flashes him a glare, but he isn't looking at her and she lets the unwelcome moniker pass for now. "Does Peeta ever have you play with his junk?"

Katniss does look away, and quick. But still, she held out longer than he did this time. "Define 'play with'."

"With your damn _hands_," he growls, casting her a furious look of his own. "The fuck did you think I meant?"

"You jerked this guy off so he'd give you the pledge?"

Haymitch sighs. As blunt as that. He wonders if this makes Katniss 'honest-to-a-fault' or just a high-tone bitch. "Yeah."

Katniss sneaks a glance at him. "Why would you do that?"

"I don't know." It had seemed to make sense at the time. It was going to happen anyway. And it's probably the least disgusting thing he's ever done with Wenceslas. And maybe the money will help this year's walking-dead-kids suffer a little less on their way to being murdered for the entertainment of the master class. And he doesn't give a rat's ass about any of that. Those rationalizations didn't even survive having his hand taken and wrapped around the thing he'd tried to think of as a giant grub. He doesn't have a friggin' clue why he kept going after that.

"No," Katniss says, breaking into his looping train of thought. "I've never done that with Peeta."

"Good for you, honey. I'm sure your mother is just so proud."

"We haven't done anything at all since I got pregnant," she admits.

Haymitch slants his eyes toward her, honestly surprised. "Well, damn, Katniss. I guess forced teenaged marriages don't work out as well as you'd think they would. So, how's the abstinence life suiting you?"

"You are _such_ a crappy mentor."

Haymitch laughs softly.

"Sometimes I think I want to, or at least, you know, it would be okay…" She looks at him helplessly. "He must want to, right? Men always want to."

"Always. Damn straight," Haymitch bites out viciously.

"Always want to have _consensual_ sex with girls they've had a crush on since freakin' _puberty_," Katniss huffs impatiently. "Unless he doesn't want to because of the baby, because I still look kind of pregnant…"

"What the hell's wrong with you two?" Haymitch says, genuinely exasperated. "It's not my fault that your parents sucked at being parents. Stop coming to me with your sex problems!"

"Peeta came to you?" Katniss narrows her eyes dangerously. "What did he say?"

"That you make a really disturbing face and howl like a banshee when you orgasm."

Katniss replies to this improbable assertion with a snort of disdain, but laughter sparkles in her eyes. "Peeta might actually have come to you for advice. That would fit in with his upside-down world view. I only wanted to commiserate with someone whose sex life is more fucked up than mine."

It hurts, but in a weird way it's good, too. It's acknowledgement, as pitiless and unflinching as everything else about Katniss.

"Do you ever talk around Peeta?" Haymitch asks. "Because I think I might have figured out what's putting him off."

"Yeah, I'm the patron saint of bad bitches," Katniss says. "What do you suppose you're the patron saint of?"

"Drunks," he says flatly and without the slightest hesitation. "I called dibs on that a long time ago."

"By some terrible mix-up, the patron saint of like Everything Everywhere-"

"Strays," Haymitch interrupts decisively.

"_Strays_, is waiting in the common room, probably pacing." She drops her voice into a stage whisper and widens her eyes. "He actually _does_ pace. Did you know that?"

"How bizarre."

"Yes, well." Katniss flutters her eyes. "My _husband_. I'm overwhelmed."

As soon as she steps out into the hall Peeta is there, all anxious and concerned. "So what's going on with him?"

Katniss shrugs. "Haymitch made a rich guy really happy and got a lot of money for it." She walks past him down the hall without another word.


	47. Game

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: I will be taking another break from posting to allow myself time to write whatever comes next. There will be new chapters starting on January 10th, 2016 or when I have the next twenty chapters ready, whichever comes first.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 47**

The Control Room is small and utilitarian, startling after a week of living in the lavish environs of the Tribute Building. Even the lobby just outside is a study in contrast to the rooms behind the twelve numbered doors.

There are three chairs arranged in a triangle, two in front and the middle one slightly behind, all with a clear view of the bank of monitors. Each chair has an attached writing surface, two on the right arm and the third on the left arm. There's a table in the corner with two neat stacks of paper, one blank and one printed with a fill-in-the-blank form for ordering gifts. Precisely between the stacks of paper are twenty ornate ink pens, spread out in a decorative fan shape. In the other unoccupied corner is a pneumatic pod station with four carriers waiting on a wire rack, each carrier branded with the number 12. A narrow door leads to a cubicle with a toilet and a sink.

Most of the wall facing the door is taken up by a bank of twenty-six monitors. The four largest, forming a square in the center, will show their own Tributes, a view of the Cornucopia, and a bird's eye view of the arena with numbered red and blue dots showing where all of the Tributes are. The other twenty-two screens, eleven on each side, will show the other Tributes.

Katniss and Peeta pause inside the door to look around while Haymitch goes straight to the chair on the right and makes himself comfortable. All of the screens are displaying a countdown now. Two minutes until the Tributes will rise into the arena.

Haymitch had escorted Chars to his ready room. That had been hard. The boy didn't have much chance, and he knew it. He'd been shaky and full of nervous energy, giggling and making jokes. Haymitch just hopes he doesn't lose his head and bolt the second he gets into the arena. He's never had a Tribute do that yet, but he's seen two kids from other Districts take the plunge over the last twenty-four years.

Peeta had escorted Glenna, and the last thing she'd said to him had been, "Protect my brother, not me." Peeta doesn't look all that steady right now, either. It's an auspicious start for the much-touted Trio from Twelve, Haymitch thinks sarcastically. Chars will get himself blown up before the Games even start, Peeta will faint, Glenna will decide life isn't worth living without her little brother and throw herself on a sword, and he and Katniss can spend the rest of the Games getting drunk and trading increasingly mean-spirited barbs. Hooray for Twelve. Hooray for us.

Katniss takes the chair next to Haymitch and starts tapping her fingers tensely on the arm, her eyes riveted on the countdown. Peeta distributes a sheet of paper and a pen to each of them before slipping into the remaining chair.

Ten seconds to go. They'll be sealed in their tubes now, the platform rising under their feet. Beside him, Katniss looks as strung up as if it were her getting ready to run. She leans forward.

They're emerging. Twenty-four teenagers click into their starting positions and take their first wild look around the arena. They're on a flat, sandy plain dotted with knee-high patches of scrub grass. To the east and the south high dunes rise in wave on wave, hiding who knows what terrors or temporary havens between and beyond. To the north and the west, more barren desert with steep and forbidding mesas rearing up to block off sections of the pale blue sky.

Chars is on the side of the Cornucopia, midway between mouth and curved tail. Glenna is directly in front of the mouth, but ignoring everything piled before her as she cranes her neck to try to find her brother.

The gong sounds. Chars immediately turns and sprints out into the desert, running hard, just trying to get away from the others. Glenna stays frozen on her platform for an agonizingly long time, looking after him. She doesn't want to lose sight of him, but she has to get enough of the supplies to save them both. At last, as the first Tributes to reach the Cornucopia join battle with yells and screams, she realizes the choice is no longer hers to make. She turns and chases after her brother empty-handed. No one takes any notice of her departure.

Thus begins the 75th Hunger Games, the Sibling Games.

On day three Chars falls down a steep, rock-studded embankment, breaking his leg in two places. Glenna scrabbles down after him on all fours, going head over heels and tumbling the last ten feet or so but fetching up with nothing worse than a few bruises. Crouching over her moaning brother, she tries to calm him and promises she won't leave him alone. She tells herself that she'll get him out of the ravine.

"Can we send them a splint?" Peeta asks, looking through the constantly updating list of gifts and prices.

"Of course not," Haymitch says harshly. He takes a long drink and looks broodingly at the screens. Damn it. _Damn_ it. More quietly, he explains, "If it's not in the catalogue, we can't send it." Things like splints are never in the catalogue. Crippled Tributes don't make very good competitors. Bad for the show.

"But we could send them some rope. She could use that and a stick. It might be enough," Katniss says feverishly. She's leaning over Peeta's shoulder to see the list.

"The boy's going to die." Haymitch can't believe he has to point this out to them. "He can't run and he can't fight. I doubt he can even _crawl_."

"I couldn't run or fight, either," Peeta reminds him.

"Gods, you're naïve! They don't let the ones that get hurt just go to ground somewhere and wait it out! That's not how this works! The only reason _you_ got away with it is because you were the goddamn Star-Crossed Lovers and she was taking care of you. Why the hell do you think I kept pushing her to kiss you, because I was _enjoying_ it?"

Peeta and Katniss exchange a long look. Katniss looks a little apologetic and a bit defensive, but mostly she looks truculent. Peeta looks at her in surprised consideration, his eyes uncharacteristically dark.

"You were telling her to do that? Yeah, I should have guessed," Peeta says.

"Oh, nicely done, Haymitch," Katniss snaps. "One for the album."

Peeta shakes his head. "Look, it really doesn't matter. Both of you did what you had to do. Right now we need to focus on Chars and Glenna, okay?"

"No, you have to accept that the boy is going to die and focus on _Glenna_," Haymitch says again. Repetition, isn't that supposed to be the key with children?

"But he's not dying. He just has a broken leg," Peeta says incredulously, his eyes going to the screen.

Haymitch rolls his eyes and takes a bracing gulp of his whiskey. Oh, for the love of-

Meanwhile in hell, Glenna has been inching her brother's shirt up, trying to get it off without moving him. She finally tugs it free, eliciting a strained but mercifully quiet whine from Chars. She begins trying to rip it apart to make her own rope, but the shirt is made of a weather-resistant and tear resistant synthetic.

"We're sending them some rope," Katniss declares unilaterally, snatching one of the gift forms from the table.

"Those have to be signed by all three of us," Haymitch tells her, leaning back and baring his teeth in a challenging grin.

"Oh, _hell_," Katniss curses.

"Imagine what it's like over in Control Room 1. They need _nine_ signatures," Haymitch says, low and taunting.

"Just sign it, Haymitch," Peeta huffs impatiently. "This is no time for one of your moods."

Haymitch's eyes flash dangerously. "One of my moods, is it?" Everything always comes back to this. It's like his dialogue with Peeta and Katniss, and with the rest of the world by extension, is one never-ending circular conversation, the encounter session from hell.

"Okay," he says, with a shrug and a lazy smile. He takes the form from her and scrawls his signature on one of the lines at the bottom, looping the tail of the 'y' around so that it underlines the rest of his name in a flamboyant wave. Why not? It's the kids' first year, after all. They should get the full benefit of helping him with this year's murders. Heaven forbid one of his silly little 'moods' ruin things for them.

His smile makes Katniss hesitate more than his growled objections ever would have.

"Thank you, Haymitch," Peeta says. Now that the form is signed and in Katniss's hands, there's an apologetic note to Peeta's voice. Haymitch can dig the unspoken things here; isn't this the subtext of all their interactions these days? 'I'm sorry I had to bring that up, but you were just being so difficult. You're damaged, so I'm going to be patient with you.'

"You stupid little kids," he utters in a low, growling voice. There's a moment of silence as they both look at him, but he doesn't bother to elaborate this time.

Katniss lays a hand on his arm, her touch as light as the brush of a moth's wings. Her subtext almost matches Peeta's, now. The boy certainly has a talent for persuasion. Haymitch's words carry no weight with the kids anymore, or his anger. Obviously they're just reactions to his ongoing victimization. More and more, this is how they respond to him: with gentle, apologetic voices and even gentler _touches_.

Enraged, he suddenly grabs Katniss's wrist and twists it hard, driving her to her knees. He holds the pressure for a few seconds, letting her know that he could break her arm if he wanted to. Then he lets go, breathing hard, already feeling ashamed and disgusted with himself.

"You ought to know by now to keep your hands to yourself, honey," he growls.

Katniss gets up, wincing and holding her arm, her eyes shooting fire at him. "I forgot only _Capitolites_ are allowed to touch you, sweetheart."

Then Peeta's there between them. His reaction had been delayed due to shock, but now here he is to save the day. Mentally, Haymitch adds the sound of trumpets.

"You two need to stop, _right now_." He glares from one of them to the other. "Katniss, is your arm okay?"

"Yeah," she says resentfully, glaring past him at Haymitch.

"Are you sure? Can you move it?"

"I'm _fine_, Peeta." She waves her arm in the air, stubbornly not reacting to the residual flare of pain that the movement brings on.

"Alright. Why don't you go sit down, then."

Katniss sits down in her chair with a shrug. She signs her name on the line under Haymitch's.

"Haymitch-" Peeta shakes his head. "If you ever do anything like that again, I will break your damn arm."

Caught completely by surprise, Haymitch stares up at Peeta. All he can think of to say is, "Whoa. Nice." He's still bigger than Peeta; the boy's only seventeen and hasn't gotten all his size yet. And Haymitch has always been strong and quick, a gift of genetics that the booze has barely put a dent in so far. He's pretty sure he'd win if they ever really fought. What floors him is hearing a threat like that in Peeta's voice, even if it's his 'I'm-pissed-at-you-and-trying-very-hard-not-to-over-react' voice.

Before he can get the words together for more of a reply (and he doubts he could come up with anything more mature than 'go on and try!' anyway) Katniss replies for him.

"Oh, goody. A pissing contest between my drunken Mentor and my over-protective husband. Just what every girl wants. Would you terribly mind signing this form before you square off with him, Peeta?" She says this in a bored, long-suffering tone that adds its own exasperated postscript: _Boys_!

Peeta obediently goes over and signs the form, then takes it over to the pneumatic pod station. He puts the form in one of the carriers, socks it into position, and pushes the button to send it, all without speaking. When he turns around he looks back and forth between them with a quick flicker of hope, as though he thinks they might actually have made up in the last two minutes while he was otherwise occupied. No such luck. His shoulders slump in a way that would be comical if the only two observers hadn't known him so well. As it is, Katniss looks away and Haymitch shifts guiltily in his seat.

"Haymitch, I didn't mean that. You know I didn't. But," he looks over at Katniss, including her, "we have to stick together, guys, okay? Haymitch isn't _your_ enemy, and Katniss isn't _your_ enemy," he says, pointing at each of them in turn. "The real enemy is out there. And if we let them divide us like this, then they've already beaten us."

"Very rousing," Haymitch says with a half-smile. He's right on the edge of feeling something like proud of the boy. That's nonsensical, and he knows it. All of Peeta's good traits exist in spite of Haymitch's influence rather than because of it, but there it is. He's _proud_ of Peeta. He takes a long drink from his flask and decides what he mostly is, is drunk.

Emboldened by the spreading warmth of the liquor, Haymitch fixes his eyes on the screen and says, "Honey?" This has to be done, because he's still seething. Peeta's once again done the trick, managed to calm him and give him back some perspective. But the rage is still there, burning and crimson-colored, trying to overwhelm him again.

"Sweetheart?" she replies, cutting her eyes at him. She's not giving in on this one. Damned if she will. She would have tolerated being called 'sweetheart' indefinitely, just because it's part of who Haymitch is. It's his nature to be contentious and laughingly disrespectful. And that name had evolved beyond a demeaning nickname to become part of their private language. 'Sweetheart' she would accept without reservations.

But after everything that's happened to both of them over the past year, he doesn't get to saddle her with a brand new degrading name. He doesn't get to throw that at her every time they talk to remind her how far things have gone, how radically out of control they both are now. And she'll be passive-aggressive right back at him until he gets that through his head. If they have to keep dealing with each other, there have got to be lines.

"One of my regulars calls me 'sweetheart' while he's fucking me," Haymitch says, dropping this on her with no warning at all. It's as sudden and unanticipated as his earlier attack, and if she'd been standing it might have driven her to the floor as easily. In her peripheral vision, she sees Peeta startle violently and half stand up before dropping back into his chair.

There's dead silence in the little room.

Haymitch breaks it, his voice and expression a ghastly attempt at humor and nonchalance. "So, unless you're planning to-" He stops, drawing in a sharp breath. "Just- don't call me that," he says in a voice almost too quiet to hear. I had a good reason for telling them that, he reassures himself. Bullshit, his mind replies. You're just fucking pathetic.

"Well, there's your gift," he sneers, nodding towards the screen. "I'm sure everything will be just _fine_, now."

"_Our_ gift," Peeta says, looking over at Katniss. "I thought it was a good idea, too." His tone belies his words, but it doesn't matter. Katniss's expression is completely walled off. She only watches the screen.

"Yeah, didn't mean to exclude you. Plenty of stupidity for both of you," Haymitch growls, slumping down in his seat. Stupid, useless, idiotic idea. And he'd signed off on it. Doesn't matter. They were dead from the minute Effie drew their names.

Poor Glenna doesn't know her fate is already sealed. Her whole figure lights up when the silver parachute lands a few feet away from her and her brother. She looks around, and under any other circumstances her smile would be something beautiful. Unable to locate anything that looks like a hidden camera, she settles for looking toward the parachute. Softly but with genuine gratitude she says, "Thank you."

Katniss turns her head away, catching her breath. Haymitch closes his eyes briefly. That isn't normal, or at least it wasn't. Glenna will have picked that up from watching Katniss last year. Tributes don't thank the Capitol for gifts, not in the Arena. It just isn't done. It's weak-looking, an underdog's gratitude that the masters have deigned to notice her. That's how it feels to Haymitch, who has had far more interaction with Capitolites than with anyone else so far in his life.

As for Katniss, Glenna has probably just forced her to see a reflection of herself, trapped and scared and ready to grasp at any hint of kindness or reassurance.


	48. Grand Spectacles

Note: There will be new chapters at least once a week until the end of April 2016, maybe longer, before the next break. I'm still less than a third of the way through writing this, if it goes in the direction I think it will. Suggestions are always welcome.

Note2: Thanks for the follows/favorites, Cheese12345 and Shoshi A!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 48**

The cannon sounds. Peeta flinches and squeezes his eyes shut.

"He's finally dead," Katniss breathes. "How long was that? Does anyone know?" Distant, devoid of feeling, that voice. The mutilated bodies are still on the main screen. Two of the Careers had stayed next to Glenna's twisted remains, all but straddled them, mugging at the cameras as two others dragged the wildly struggling Chars back over. Then they had started in on the boy. Only now do the Careers begin to move away, laughing and hooting and howling. Districts one and two have known for decades that ruthlessness is the only way for them to get the silver parachutes. And if Haymitch is right about who put them up to this particular horror show, they'll soon be getting some pretty rich gifts indeed.

He and the kids may well have started a whole new trend today. As far as Haymitch knows, torture has never been a part of the Games before, not even for the most aggressive Careers. This year they'll be rewarded for it. So they'll do it next year, too. And if the Capitolites like it… Where is this going to end?

"I wish we were dead," Peeta mutters, so jarring and strange that Haymitch thinks for a second that he himself spoke the words.

Haymitch wrenches his eyes away from the screen as the claw descends for Glenna. He has to do something about the kids. He hates kids- real kids, the little kind. He's never been around them in his adult life, but he's seen enough of them from a distance to know he hates the stupid thoughtless creatures almost as much as he hates the adults they will grow into. But over the last several hours he'd begun to wish that Katniss and Peeta really were kids, so he could have put his hands over their eyes and made them cover their ears. Instead, this was just another thing he couldn't protect them from.

"If we hadn't sent that rope, do you think she would have left him?" Katniss's eyes plead with him to say 'no', and he grasps at this to keep from sinking any deeper.

"Not a chance. She would have given up on the splint and tried to drag him to some sort of shelter, and the Careers would have caught up to them anyway. It didn't make a difference, one way or the other."

He looks over at Peeta. Peeta still has his eyes shut and is pressed back into the chair, gripping the arms. "Peeta? Alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah, fine," Peeta mutters without moving or opening his eyes.

"It's over. They're dead," Haymitch tells him, watching him worriedly.

"Someone please wake me up." The teenager sounds about fifteen seconds away from the first scream.

"Let's get out of here," Haymitch says. Cautiously, he glances up at the monitors. The mangled bodies of Chars and Glenna are finally gone. The Careers are ambling along a rocky path, sharing out strips of jerky as they walk. The silver parachutes will arrive soon- their reward. He doesn't want the kids to see that.

Peeta shakes his head in a tight, convulsive jerk of denial. "I can't go back to the Penthouse right now." Chars and Glenna will be everywhere in the Penthouse. And not just them. One hundred fifty-two kids so far have spent their last night before the Games in that suite of rooms. For one hundred forty-eight of them, it was the last place they ever ate or slept or dreamed in safety. How many of them were too scared to notice what they ate? How many of them cried themselves to sleep or spent that last night staring numbly out the window at the dozens of street parties below? The bloody machine churns on, year after year, and now he's part of it. Katniss, the bravest and strongest person he's ever met, is part of it. If they can reduce Katniss to a part of their Games, they can do anything. They can't be stopped.

Katniss gets up and pulls Peeta to his feet and puts her arms around him. "Peeta. Don't cry. Come on. Don't." It comes out a little sharp-edged, like an order. Katniss doesn't know how to comfort people. Comforting is not in her nature. Haymitch decides she's doing a good enough job, though. Passable. And the fact that's she's his wife has to count for something. No need for him to get involved.

Where can he take them, if not back to the Penthouse? On his own there'd have been the bars. But he can't take them anywhere public. The paparazzi will descend on them like locusts, and Peeta's clearly not up to that right now. What does that leave?

That leaves the Cell, of course. He really should have seen this coming. He and the kids have just watched their Tributes being slowly tortured to death and now it looks like the designated reservoir of sanity in their trio is going to have some sort of nervous breakdown. Where is there to go from here, except the Cell?

"I've got a place," he says. It'll protect them from the TV people, at least until Peeta calms down a little. "You two stay in here. I'll be right back." Katniss is still holding Peeta, and neither of the kids reply.

Outside in the Grand Lounge, Effie is waiting for him. She waves and rises to her feet as he comes toward her through the clusters of people: Escorts, Victors, the wealthiest of the Sponsors. A tremulous and thoroughly unconvincing smile waxes and wanes on her face, as though she has to keep reminding herself of what demeanor is expected of her. She doesn't call out to him, just stands and waits for him to reach her. As soon as he comes within reach she almost throws herself on him, wrapping her arms around him.

"That was horrible," she breathes into his ear, barely audible. And then she begins to weep, silently and helplessly.

Haymitch hugs her back and kisses her cheek for the benefit of the increasing number of observers. Everyone here expects Escorts to get regular 'favors' from the Victors they help handle, so a kiss shouldn't do more than raise a few eyebrows. Silly, backwards Victors sometimes do form a one-sided emotional attachment to those who have them on a regular basis. How droll.

He needs her to let go and take a step back, ideally while delivering a mildly scolding cluck or a light swat on the shoulder, the way someone would react to a dog licking them on the face. He needs her to do what all these spoiled, superior Capitolites expect her to do. Most of all, he needs her to stop crying. Right now. He can feel his heart thudding in his chest and his mouth tastes like copper. They're watching. Any minute now they'll realize Effie Trinket is _crying_ over the deaths of a couple of Tributes, and crying on Haymitch Abernathy's shoulder. At best, she'll lose her position. Given the track record of what happens to anyone who gets close to _him_, she'll be dead in two weeks.

Keeping hold of her he walks her backwards a couple of steps and shoves her down on the couch, landing on top of her. Everyone is watching now, even the most die-hard Games fans turning their attention from the temporarily blood-free screen to see what the notorious Lush is going to do next. There are exclamations and laughter. This is a bonus no one expected.

Not giving himself time to think, Haymitch lowers his head and nips the pale skin of her throat hard and sharp before kissing her soundly on the mouth. That does the job.

"Haymitch!" Effie exclaims, pushing at his chest. He sits up immediately, quelling the dull anger and shame he feels. He doesn't mind playing the drunk for the Capitolites. He is a drunk. Maybe he wouldn't have been if it weren't for their Games and everything that followed; maybe he would have found his way to it regardless. Either way, it's a decision he made for himself. He's never intentionally played into their stereotype of the backwards, degenerate Districter before.

"What- what's gotten into you!" Effie continues indignantly, straightening her wig. If there's any hint of teariness left for them to see now, they'll put it down to embarrassment or the little bite he gave her. Effie's got her game face back on, and it's impossible to tell if she's playing the role required of her or honestly angry at the embarrassing scene, or both.

Haymitch grins at her. "I thought you _wanted_ me to kiss you. Might want to watch those mixed signals."

Effie gives him a perfect basilisk glare. She then turns a serene and pointed smile on the room at large. Taking the hint, people look away and go back to their show and their more-or-less sparkling conversation.

"Where are the children?" Effie asks, peering around him.

"I need you to call us a car," Haymitch says softly. "Peeta's a little shaken up. I don't want anyone shoving cameras in their faces right now."

Her face falls and he sees her eyes start to tear up again as she remembers why the kids might not be in any state to talk to the press at the moment.

"Keep it together, Effie," Haymitch whispers. "I can't kiss you again."

Effie nods, fighting to control herself. "I'll go summon a car," she says. "We'll all go." Her voice rises very slightly at the end, and she looks up at him pleadingly.

Haymitch nods. "Well, _yeah_. I certainly can't be trusted to chaperone a couple of teenagers." He smiles at her again, trying to get her to smile back. Subtly, he slides one of his hands over to cover hers.

Effie smiles, just for a second. "Haymitch, I'm sorry," she whispers.

"Later," he cuts her off. "Go call the car. We'll be waiting in the Control Room."

She gets up, squaring her shoulders. Haymitch watches her glide out of the lounge, pausing here and there to make her excuses to a few of her longtime friends. Once she's safely out of the room, he returns to the kids.

"Effie's getting us a car. We'll get out of here in a few minutes," he promises them.

They're watching the screen again, because it's unavoidable. Right now it's the biggest thing in their existence. Certainly bigger than Haymitch. Probably bigger than each other.

On screen the Careers are sorting through a treasure-trove, dividing up food and supplies and weapons. There's a bag of apples, six packs of jerky, a hatchet, a small knife, a jar of wound ointment, and a pair of night-vision goggles. It's an unbelievable windfall. Several discarded silver parachutes lay around them.

"Where are we going?" Peeta asks shakily.

"The Cell," Haymitch answers him, watching the screen. Six Careers this year, four boys and two girls. Assessing them he decides it'll probably be the boy from District 1 this year, unless he throws it to his sister. The Capitolites would like that. It would give the ending that extra flair of drama.

"The Cell?" Katniss asks, looking up at him.

"My apartment," Haymitch clarifies. "It's- it's not bad. And it's private."

"Okay," Peeta says distractedly, not really processing the information.

"That isn't where…" Katniss asks. She can't even complete the sentence.

"No," he answers her quickly. "Nothing happens there. It's just a place to sleep."

Katniss looks at him with deep skepticism. He can see the disgust creeping back into the edges of her gray eyes, and he feels the familiar anger and shame ebbing back into him in direct proportion to it.

"Stop mentally undressing me, honey," he sneers at her. "It's a little bit inappropriate with your husband in the room."

Katniss wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Oh darn, that's right, _I'm_ married," she says caustically. "Why don't you try the lounge? I'm sure someone out there will be glad to bend you over the nearest couch."

"Impressive, Mrs. Mellark," Haymitch retorts. "Did you just manage to work a 'dead girlfriend' reference in there? Vicious _and_ vulgar."

Manipulative bastard. That's just like him, Katniss seethes. "You know I didn't mean it that way, you-" She stops abruptly, shutting her mouth and pressing her lips together to prevent the next word from escaping. She won't call him what he is now, especially not during a fight. Some things you can't come back from.

Peeta watches the screen, where a huge reptilian mutt with rows of sharp teeth is silently swimming toward a pair of teenage girls. He should step in and stop Katniss and Haymitch before it gets any more out of hand. But all he feels right now is numbing apathy. It's yet another installment of 'I-can-be-crueler-than-you'; and maybe they hate each other now, he doesn't know. They certainly seem to. His only two allies hate each other, and meanwhile a teenage girl is being eaten alive by a scaly monster while her sister screams, and clearly nothing he can ever hope to accomplish will make the slightest bit of difference.

"Anyway, I haven't had sex with anyone at the apartment," Haymitch says in a normal tone, as if those the last couple of minutes never happened.

It's Effie who unwittingly breaks up the fight. She steps into the Control Room without knocking and announces, "The car is waiting."

"Good. Grab a kid," Haymitch tells her. "I've got the boy. You can deal with the girl for a while."


	49. Role Models

Note: Thanks for the review, CorruptedPrincess! You're far too kind. I'm thrilled you thought it good enough for a second reading!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 49**

"Haymitch?" Katniss says. She's sitting on the leather sofa in what Haymitch has always thought of as the Game Room. She's got her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. Beside her, Peeta sits hunched over with his elbows on his knees. Three feet behind Peeta and a little to the left is where they shoved him up against the wall that first time.

"Yeah?" he replies, wondering if there's a way he could ask them to sit at the kitchen counter instead. Or in the bedroom. He's probably not set foot in the bedroom more than four or five times. Nothing scary in the bedroom.

"Talk about something. Anything. I'm tired of listening to the screams."

"Yeah. Please," Peeta says unexpectedly. They're the first words he's spoken since they got here.

Haymitch thinks about it for a moment. Surrounded by the gestalt of the Cell, it's difficult to think of any topic appropriate for two shell-shocked teenagers. All of the anecdotes and observations left in his mind orbit around the Games and the List, twin suns that it's best never to look directly at. But these two are sick with a lot of the same things he's been poisoned with, and he guesses he can come up with something.

"Did I ever tell you kids about my Uncle Fash?"

"Story time?" Peeta asks. He looks up at Haymitch and kind of half smiles for a second before dropping his eyes back to his tightly clasped hands.

"You just hush up, kid. You might learn something," Haymitch drawls.

"Tell us," Katniss demands.

Haymitch nods, trying to find the rhythm to this story. "He was a foreman in the mines, which made his family practically Seam royalty. He had five kids: four girls and one boy that me and Roen just felt so _bad_ for." That gets a small smile from Katniss. Peeta doesn't look up, but Haymitch can tell he's listening.

"With a house full of women, I guess poor old Fash was just about falling over his own damn feet looking for excuses to get away for a few hours. It just so happened that where he usually got away to was our house. Got so he was there every Sunday, and sometimes on weeknights, too." Haymitch pauses, assessing Katniss's look. "This was my paternal uncle, honey. And my dad had been dead for years. _Grow up_."

"Like I care about a couple of long-dead philanderers," Katniss retorts flatly. "_Get over yourself_."

"Could you just continue the story, please?" Peeta asks from his hunched-over, not-looking-at-this position.

Katniss looks over at her husband, her iciness melting away. "Yeah. Please, keep going," she says to Haymitch.

"So one day, one Sunday, he showed up first thing in the morning, rummaged through our kitchen cabinets like there was actually enough shit in there that he needed to search for something, and then turned around and declared with a perfectly straight face that we needed carrots. Or radishes. Some kind of tap root.

"I asked him why, and he told me," Haymitch affects a gruff, heavily accented voice, sounding very much like some of the older men Katniss has heard talking over mugs of soup in the Hob. "Lad, without tap roots ye'll ne'er get yer fur in."

Katniss bursts out laughing, and it's beautiful, that, beautiful for just one sparkling moment.

"So anyway. I was like thirteen at the time, and I was a really dumb kid, way worse than you two. I thought it over for maybe ten seconds, _thanked_ the hound, if you can credit it, and made to leave for the Hob, where I guess I'd have traded my shirt and my pants, too, if need be. Afore I could get to the door, Fash stops me and says I have to take my little brother with me.

"'Why?' I asked.

"He took a long, hard, look at me and said: 'Because ye've got ta start the tap roots early if ye want ta get everythin' _right_.'"

"Nice guy," Peeta says.

"He was kind of an ass." Haymitch smiles cynically and shrugs. "So me and Roen walked all the way to the Hob. Let me rephrase that: I walked all the way to the Hob with a hyperactive five year old running circles around me and yapping like a damn puppy and careening off the trees. It was late July and way, way too hot for that shit, and en route I decided never to let him in on the importance of tap roots.

"Well, of course we didn't have a single mark between us, and I wasn't about to tell any of the adults selling vegetables why I needed them. If you want the truth, I really believed they knew damn well why Roen needed them. And if they thought I'd already 'got my fur' I sure as hell wasn't going to say otherwise.

"Neither of us was wearing shoes, either. So I really did end up selling my shirt to pay for the damn roots, mine and Roen's, too."

"Wow," Katniss says. "Just, I don't even know what to say to that. Wow."

Haymitch grins and gives her a slow nod. "Our shirts probably ended up in the hands of your grandmother, right before they were cut up and boiled and used to bandage up some poor son of a bitch who got… rock-crushed, or something." He gives his head a quick shake to dispel the shades that crowd forward eagerly. "Anyway. Got enough for them for five radishes, or two carrots. I bought the radishes. I gave Roen two of them and we started the walk back home. Along the way I broke down and gave him a third. Roen could do the sad-hungry-eyes thing like no one else. The brat inhaled it in two bites and then started pelting me with sticks and pebbles and making 'bang-bang' noises, so _that_ was a waste of good food.

"When we got back to the house there was a friggin' tie wrapped around the doorknob. It was the one and only tie my family owned, a dark blue one I'd worn to both my Reapings so far."

"There's an image," Katniss snickers, nudging Peeta. "Thirteen year old Haymitch all dressed up in a tie on his way to the Reaping."

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone outside the Capitol wear a tie," Peeta says with tentative amusement.

"Maybe not, but the proud tradition of 'so-bad-it's-funny' formal outfits was well established in 12 by then," Haymitch says, raising his eyebrows at them. "I like to think in my case it was a deliberate statement.

"But back then, standing there under the July sun with my kid brother and my radish breath and really, really wanting a glass of water, I was forced to stop and consider why something that ought to be squirreled away in the back of the lowest dresser drawer was wrapped around our rusted doorknob, fading in the sun. I took it off the doorknob and told Roen to wait outside. And then I snuck in, trying to look in every direction at once. Well, right away I heard this thudding coming from the bedroom."

"Haymitch," Effie tries to interrupt. Haymitch reaches over without looking and finds her hand. He squeezes it. Effie cants her head in a listening posture, looking at him in sudden surprise and confusion, and falls silent.

"Blithe as you'd like, I threw open the door. And Fash looks up from what he's doing and sees me and says: 'Well. Did ye get yer tap roots, laddie buck?'

"Now, Fash had a hell of a temper when it was roused, and 'laddie buck' was his version of hooving the dirt. I lit out of there like a flash, already yelling at Roen to run before I'd even got out the front door. And we were most of the way to the Meadows before I realized why Fash wasn't going to give chase."

Haymitch looks up and both of the kids are grinning. "Your uncle sounds like kind of a jerk," Peeta offers.

"Aw, not so much. See, he _looked_ up, but he didn't _get_ up. Saved me from seeing a whole lot more than his bare ass. A jerk would have gotten up."

"Warped. That is a warped definition of jerk," Katniss says.

Haymitch shrugs. "For almost three years after, he brought me a radish once or twice every month. Fash was never one to give up a joke while he could still wring some pleasure from laughing at you."


	50. Penance

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 50**

The day after they get back to 12 the three of them stand in a line on an unpaved lane, looking at the Vogens' dwelling. Haymitch has told the other two that this is a bad idea, but they're teenagers and he's come to realize that teenagers have to get their noses punched before they'll listen to anything an adult tells them. Sometimes literally.

"This is the place," Katniss says redundantly. None of them move. If anyone is looking out the windows of the houses around them, Haymitch can only imagine the impression they're giving right now.

Many years ago he used to occasionally take the long way home from the Hob, wending up and down the streets of the section he grew up in and past the school he no longer attended. He'd been just a stupid kid back then: sixteen, seventeen. He stopped walking that way before he was eighteen, he's sure of that. He'd started to notice how the parents all called their kids inside as he neared, and the furtive looks some of them threw at him.

Peeta nods, gathering a flimsy façade of confidence around his shoulders like a blanket. "Come on." He takes the first steps toward the door. Katniss marches after him, looking straight ahead, chin up and eyes narrowed.

Haymitch shrugs one shoulder in a gesture of resignation. He goes after them, walking quickly and gracelessly. He overtakes Peeta at the doorstep and forces the kids to take positions to either side and slightly behind him. If someone's going to get punched, he guesses it'd better be him. He doesn't trust Katniss not to hit back. She doesn't handle being surprised any better than he does.

He raises a gloved hand and raps on the door.

The door opens a crack and a haggard and unkempt woman peers out at them. Her eyes, already red and puffy, widen in shock. "What-" she starts. She opens the door wider so they can see all of her. "Why are you here?" She looks to Haymitch first, but only for a second. She settles on Katniss, addressing her question to the girl instead.

"We came to say we're sorry. For your loss," Katniss says. Katniss hasn't been crying, as far as Haymitch knows. It's Peeta who kept breaking down that night in the Cell and on the train ride home. But Katniss has a way of looking and of speaking that broadcasts her grief and despair more forcefully than tears or sobs ever could. If you could hear the unhappy denizen of that famous old painting 'The Scream' speak to you, it would sound a bit like Katniss in one of her darkest moments.

Her words are brief, unoriginal and inane. It doesn't matter. The woman stares at her, frozen, not even breathing. Then she jerks forward like a marionette in the hands of a small child and hugs Katniss. Katniss hugs her back as the woman sobs against her. Peeta swallows, his throat clicking audibly, and looks away. Katniss still doesn't cry. A short sighing moan escapes her, quiet and brief as the far away call of a coyote. That's all.

Haymitch takes a half step back, trying to be unobtrusive. He remains on high alert. The father hasn't put in an appearance yet.

"Please come in," the woman chokes out, letting go of Katniss and scrubbing ineffectually at her eyes. "All of you."

"Thank you," Peeta says, following Katniss into the shack.

The four of them take seats around the small square table. Three young children, the oldest a boy of about thirteen, watch them warily from the doorway leading into the single bedroom.

"I'm Brige. These are Stuwar, Holly, and Kitta. Glenna and Char's little brother and sisters." Her voice catches again and she looks down and rubs at her eyes. "Go on back in the bedroom, you lot," she orders. They go, Stuwar holding the little girls' hands.

Brige looks after them for a moment, collecting herself. "Stuwar is thirteen this year. Holly is seven, and Kitta's my baby. She's just four." She meets Katniss's eyes, then reluctantly shifts her gaze to Haymitch. "Could you... Look, I can't lose any more. I couldn't bear it. If it weren't for them, if they didn't still need me, I'd have thrown myself against the fence when Glenna and Chars died. Please, tell me none of them will be selected. Hasn't the Capitol already taken their pound of flesh? Why can't the rest of mine be safe?"

Haymitch wonders how he could possibly have thought getting punched was the worst case scenario here. His first seven years as a Mentor he'd gone to the parents with his apologies after the Games. He'd been cussed at several times, called more variations of the word 'drunkard' than he'd known existed, hit with a broom once, punched twice, calmly told to please go away on three occasions, and one time he'd been thanked by a man with an utterly inflectionless voice who'd looked as though he might be sleep-walking and who'd been gently led back into the house by his silent wife. That it took him seven years to learn not to do this only proves what his uncle used to say about him: 'The lad slept in on the day they were handing out the smarts and somehow got in line twice for the stubbornness.'

"We don't have any control over who gets Reaped," he explains what should be obvious to all but the grief-crazed and the desperate.

"None?" she asks. "But what about Effie Trinket? You could talk to her, couldn't you? You could do something…"

"Effie doesn't have any control over it, either. It's a random drawing." Usually it's a random drawing. Unless someone's gotten on the wrong side of the Capitol, or they decide to liven things up by throwing in the child or maybe the sibling of a Victor. For this family it will be a random drawing. But she has three kids to go, and fifteen years before the youngest of them will be safe from the Reaping. And this looks like a tesserae house.

"Don't let them take tesserae," Peeta puts in. Haymitch and Katniss turn brief but identical glares on him, neither of them giving their reaction an instant's thought_. Town kids_. The divide between Seam and Town is deeply ingrained in all of them from the time they're old enough to understand who almost always gets Reaped and why.

Peeta quails under their looks, wishing he could call his words back. He hadn't thought. He'd just wanted to say something to help.

"Stuwar already takes tesserae," Brige says hopelessly.

"So do almost all the Seam kids," Katniss tells her. "It doesn't mean they'll pick him."

Brige nods at the table, wiping her eyes again. At least she's mostly stopped crying. "Were they happy, before they went into the Arena? Did they have a good last night?" she asks in a faltering voice.

Katniss looks at Haymitch helplessly. What's she supposed to say to that? There's nothing to say that won't sound empty and meaningless. Haymitch nods, is about to voice the required affirmative because it must be better than saying nothing at all.

"I was with Glenna right before she went into the Arena," Peeta speaks up. "I walked her to her ready room. She told me to save her brother, even though it meant her death. She was scared, but she was already thinking about how to protect Chars. Your daughter was a brave, selfless, noble young woman, and I'll never forget her."

Brige nods, crying silently. "Thank you," she whispers. "And- and Chars?"

"He was laughing, making jokes. Said he wanted to be buried under the schoolhouse so he could haunt science class," Haymitch supplies, not knowing what to say. He's making a hash of this, of course he is. He'll never have Peeta's gift with words. But he has to say something, and at least it isn't 'they had a good last night.'

Brige nods again and, amazingly, voices a watery chuckle. "Science was Char's favorite subject. He loved school." She stands up. "Wait here. I'll be right back." With that she disappears into the bedroom. She returns carrying what looks like a small roundish rock and a stuffed cat.

"I want you to have these," she says decisively, in the crisp tone people get when they've been crying for a long time and will soon be crying again but are determined not to do so now. She hands the stuffed cat to Peeta. It's almost square-shaped, with pointed ears and a drawn on feline smile and long arms and tail. The base is wider and seems to be weighted with small pebbles so that the cat can sit upright. It's made of soft, well-worn green fabric.

"Glenna liked to make toys for the little girls out of scraps of old worn-out clothes. She made several cats. I think they were her favorites. There, you keep that one."

She sets the rock in Haymitch's hand. It's about half the size of his fist, and the surface is covered with fossils. "Chars was a collector. Interesting rocks, bird nests, snake skins. He liked to study everything he found outdoors. He was so smart. Such a smart boy." She stops, blinks rapidly and takes a deep breath. "Remember them, okay? They were good kids, so don't forget."

"We won't," Haymitch promises, staring at the rock sitting in his open hand. He's never forgotten any of them. They were all damn good kids.


	51. Wisdom

Note: No warnings, sorry for the lengthy notes. Feel free to skip ahead to the story.

Note2: Thanks for the review, MightyMarauder! I think they realize how much he's sacrificed to protect them, and I think they are grateful. But Katniss in particular would understand that, because of the precise nature of what he's endured for them, he doesn't want it acknowledged. He doesn't want to be treated differently because it would be a constant reminder. At the same time, she doesn't want to drag it out in the open any more than he does. This is a case where having very similar mindsets ends up protecting them both. At least, that's my take on it.

Note3: And thanks goes to CorruptedPrincess, as always. I hope I haven't portrayed him as being too paternal, because I don't think he sees himself that way. Peeta's 'older brother' or his own 'fucked-up uncle' is closer to the mark, I think, at least from his point of view. Though, as the great Stephen King writes in 'Duma Key', we lie to ourselves so much that we could do it for a living.

This one's for Elisa Lam.

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 51**

The whole house is lit up like the stage where Caesar interviews the famous and the soon to die. There are big halogens set up in the corners of the living room, dining room, kitchen, and master bedroom. Less obtrusive ceiling mounted spotlights have been installed in every other room. There are even extra lights in both bathrooms.

Haymitch has been at the kids' house for something less than two hours. The day stretches interminably before him. It's Rue's first birthday, and he won't be allowed to leave until the Capitol TV crew decides they have enough footage of the Three Victors Celebrating Together for their warm, fuzzy, saccharine special feature.

Everywhere in this wretched house Haymitch feels watched and followed and surrounded. The hair on the back of his neck prickles as he leans against the wall in the entryway, drinking white liquor from his flask and keeping an eye on the doors. There are a lot of doors: the one leading outside, which is where any new threat will likely emerge from (like Peacekeepers, he tells himself, Peacekeepers with their whips and their batons and their window-dressing justifications. That's what he needs to watch out for, because Wenceslas and Balthamos aren't in Twelve, of course they're not.); the door to the kitchen, where the air is always hot and somehow unpleasantly charged, like sharp little bits of plaster from the ceiling and the walls are flying around invisible; and the door to the living room, with its loud, imperative voices spilling out at him.

He should go into the living room, but his spirit recoils from the suggestion. The kids are in there, and he should make sure…

He shakes his head and mutters, "Sure sure sure," very low. Quick repetition of a single, meaningless word to derail a painful train of thought. Anyway. The kids are in there, and Rue. But nothing irredeemable could happen to them surrounded by cameras, not anymore. He's been able to do that, at least.

"I hate this. I hate it," he mutters. Every goddamn thing is an ordeal now. Like the stylists.

From his own Victory Tour at age sixteen until the kids had won their Games, he hadn't even had stylists. For twenty-four years it was enough for him to just show up where he was supposed to, wearing some kind of clothing. His clothes didn't even have to be clean. It pleased the Capitolites to make a caricature of him, the Drunken Train-Wreck, and appearing in unwashed, stained clothes played into their fun, humorous image of him.

He's still their Drunken Train-Wreck, but now he's also _pretty_, the kind of 'beautiful disaster' that rich people want to get to know intimately. All his appearances are now preceded by the degrading, dehumanizing preparations he remembers from when he was sixteen. He shouldn't care. It's not like he has any dignity left to defend.

Ever since what happened on the first day of the kids' Victory Tour, his stylists are clearly afraid of him. You'd think that would make it more bearable, right? In practice, it means they crowd him. While one of them trims his beard or his hair, the other two crowd so close to him that he can feel their breath on his skin. Is this intended to intimidate him? Maybe the implication he's meant to feel is that if he makes any aggressive movements they will all be on him at once. Are the other two maybe even acting as temporary bodyguards for the one tending to him?

He could kill all three of them easily, even now. He's not a fighter anymore, that's been demonstrated dozens (hundreds?) of times. But sitting there stock still with one of them holding his chin and tilting it this way and that and the warm, wet breath of the other two on his face and neck he knows he still has enough fight to kill these people.

"Haymitch?" The voice intrudes on him, enters his mind and jerks his thoughts to it. It protrudes into his space like a physical thing. He could kill them. Why won't they stay away from him? This voice is just another taunt, another contemptuous 'look at you, sweetheart, getting all hot and bothered.'

"Haymitch? I could really use some help. Come on, don't bug out now. Please?" Peeta stays where he is in the doorway, watching Haymitch dream with his eyes open. On nine days out of ten, he could bring the man out of this state. Just staying near him and talking about nothing in particular will do it. After a minute or two Haymitch will start to catch the sense of the words instead of just the sound, and then he'll be with them again. But they've been pushing him away from his windows on reality this morning, and now he just stares through Peeta with hollow, indifferent eyes.

Fraying and on edge, Peeta tries one more time to reach him. This will have to be the last try. If Haymitch doesn't come back quickly, Peeta will have to just turn around and go back in there and do the best he can without him. He has to get back to Katniss and Rue.

"Come on. I left Katniss holding Rue so that her hands would be full, but that's not going to work much longer. I'd guess we have about three or four more minutes before she drops the baby on the nearest chair and lunges at someone."

"Yeah, okay. I'm coming," Haymitch answers immediately. "Three of us, eleven of them. They don't stand a chance."

"Rah rah," Peeta says amiably. "Welcome back."

Haymitch pauses to give him a narrow look. "Never left. Never will leave. We're dead, and this is hell." He turns away, lowers his head like a bull getting ready to charge, and enters the living room.

"Great, just as long as we're making the best of it, then," Peeta mutters under his breath as he follows.

The tableau that greets them is almost exactly the one Peeta just left. Katniss is on her feet, clutching Rue against her chest as the fingers of her right hand clench a quarter of an inch over the baby's back. She's leaning forward slightly, and if she'd been looking at Peeta that way Peeta would have been backing up and trying to position a heavy piece of furniture between them. The director is glaring back at her, but her glare just isn't in the same league. Her chest heaves visibly as she opens her mouth to say something inadvisable.

"I'm back!" Peeta breaks in hastily. It's a stupid thing to say when he only left a couple of minutes ago, but it does the job. The director's head snaps around to the new arrivals. Her eyes gleam in sudden inspiration and poorly hidden relief.

"Let's get some pictures of Haymitch holding Rue!" the director commands.

Haymitch takes a step back, raising his hands defensively. "That's just a really terrible idea." He looks over at Rue. The baby looks cheerful enough, he guesses. Considering the tense, cornered badger look Katniss is currently sporting, the baby's being a real trooper; probably because her father has reappeared to save her. Even as Haymitch watches Rue begins to squirm in Katniss's arms. She holds her own tiny arms out and bleats an imperative sounding cry. "Daaa," it sounds like.

Haymitch snorts brief, surprised laughter. "You taught her to _curse_? Cool."

Peeta steps up to Katniss and takes his daughter, and Rue happily bats at his chin and repeats herself at a fairly impressive volume. "_Daaa_!" Peeta looks askance at Haymitch as this goes on. If the TV crew wasn't here he would be in for a stern lecture. Haymitch gets control of himself and gives Peeta an innocent smile.

"She's saying 'dad', not 'damn'," Katniss snaps, rolling her eyes. She can't keep up the façade of angry irritation, though. A reluctant answering smile tugs at her lips.

"Katniss, please don't curse in front of Rue," Peeta says mildly, bouncing the giggling baby.

"Right. Sorry," she says, not even attempting to sound sincere.

"People, people, we're on a schedule here!" the director announces, preening and fluttering her hands. The magic words having thus been uttered, all three Victors turn their eyes to her. Only Peeta takes a stab at looking friendly.

"Well, now, where were we?" she asks. Perhaps seeing Haymitch open his mouth to answer, she continues very quickly. "Pictures! Pictures of Haymitch holding Rue! Well, go on, Peeta. Give the baby to Haymitch."

Haymitch steps back again and bumps into the wall. Damn. To coin a phrase. "You're not hearing me. Bad idea. The kid'll freak."

"It's okay," Peeta says unexpectedly. Haymitch gives him a forbidding look. Peeta _knows_ better. He might have expected Katniss to hand the baby to him just to show this stupid woman _why_ it's a bad idea and get it over with, but Peeta's always been a hell of a lot more protective of their offspring.

"Come on, take her," Peeta says. "We've been doing this all morning. It won't kill you to smile for the camera for a few minutes."

With reluctance akin to someone receiving a yowling and probably diseased feral cat, Haymitch lets Peeta lay the baby in his arms. He winces, bracing himself. Any second now…

Nonplussed, he looks down at the baby lying against his chest. She's _smiling_, her nearly toothless mouth open in that expression Peeta calls a smile. What the fuck? The few other times Peeta's talked, wheedled or tricked Haymitch into holding Rue, the girl has wailed like a wounded animal. Really unearthly, pure terror, someone-_help_-me crying.

"Hey, Rue," he says cautiously. _Now_ she'll start. But she stays quiet. "Rue, look, the boogeyman's got you," he nudges her.

"Haymitch," Peeta intones in his oh-so-weary 'behave' voice.

"Something's wrong with her," Haymitch says, confused and worried. Oh hell, what if she's sick? One hundred percent of sick babies die, as far as he's ever seen. Hell's bells.

"She's drugged," Katniss says, and this time the undercurrent of anger in her voice isn't feigned. "I'd have thought _you'd_ spot that right off."

Haymitch doesn't bother to reply to the jibe. Instead he looks to Peeta, raising an eyebrow.

"The TV crew gave her something to keep her happy for the cameras," Peeta explains. He meets Haymitch's eyes, cerulean blue looking into stormy gray. And despite his calm tone, Haymitch understands that he's as furious as Katniss over these Capitolites doping his one year old daughter to make her 'camera ready'.

"Well, damn," he says laconically. Peeta nods slightly, not bothering to chastise him for his language.

"Peeta, out of the shot, please!" the director interjects, ignoring this latest exchange with the aplomb of an intelligent person tuning out the meaningless babble of idiots. "We'll get more of you and Katniss in just a minute."

Peeta steps away, though he continues to watch Haymitch closely. Ready to swoop in and grab the baby if the Great Lush sort of forgets he's holding her and reaches for his flask or something, Haymitch judges wryly.

"Look at the camera. Good. Now look down at Rue. Good. Hold that pose. Very good. Look at the camera again."

Haymitch follows the commands almost without thought, putting on his 'friendly' smile. He's used to doing photo shoots like this. They don't insist on getting shots of him _every_ time they show up to stick their noses in the kids' lives, just nine times out of ten.

Rue is unexpectedly heavy in his arms. How long has it been since he last held her? Three or four months, probably. She's grown more than he would have thought possible in that time. Also, she probably seems heavier when she's just lying still, rather than struggling to get away.

Too bad Peeta doesn't have a camera. He could take his own picture and put it in one of those nice frames and set it on an end table. Then he could pretend that Rue likes her 'Uncle Haymitch'. Seeing as Haymitch and Katniss struggle to be civil to each other more often than not, and Haymitch is never going to be on good terms with either Katniss's or Peeta's parents, it might be just the pick-me-up the boy needs. Maybe then Peeta can go on believing in those future 'cozy holidays celebrated together'. Haymitch is pretty sure he and Katniss are wearing out Peeta's optimism.

"Alright, let's do group shots. Katniss, you hold the baby for these." The director has Katniss sit in one of the pristine white claw-foot chairs holding Rue in her lap, while Peeta and Haymitch stand behind her on either side of the chair.

"So are you enjoying it, being surrounded?" Haymitch murmurs at her through his smile. "Capitolites in front of you, and the two of us looming behind you."

Katniss shrugs, but Haymitch can see that she's anxious about having people so close to her and not being able to see them. Anyone would be. Her voice is smooth and even as she replies. "I guess I'm just not as much of a craven as you are."

"Play nice, you two," Peeta says quietly. Yeah, they're definitely crushing the optimism out of the boy.

In this particular instance Haymitch is actually committing a genuine 'act of kindness'. He'd sure as hell want the people standing behind him to speak and sort of remind him who they are. Peeta's comment had been preemptive. Exchanges between Haymitch and Katniss can go from 'bloodless' to 'take-no-prisoners' in a flash.

"Yes, Peeta," they both say in perfect sarcastic harmony, and for the second time today they share an amused little look. Things are going well this morning.

"Just think, in another couple of years Rue will be old enough to talk," Peeta says longingly. "Then I can finally have an adult conversation with someone."

"Everyone stop talking and _smile_," the director commands, and they all obey. The camera clicks over and over again as they hold their frozen positions and their frozen smiles.

From down the hall in the study, the phone rings. It startles all three of them, and Haymitch takes the opportunity to step around to the side of the chair where Katniss can see him.

Peeta raises his hand. "Can I get that?"

"Yes, but do try to keep it brief, won't you?" the director answers. The photographer busily adjusts the lenses on his camera.

Peeta goes to answer the phone. A couple of minutes later he returns with a strange look on his face.

"Haymitch, it's for you," he says. And it takes a second because the context is all wrong, but then Haymitch places his tone. It's the gentle, reassuring, pity-laced tone Peeta uses when Haymitch is just coming out of what Peeta euphemistically calls 'one of his spells'. Shit, what's this now?

"You should go take the call," Peeta prompts, and that gets Haymitch moving. He's wracking his brain. The only ones that have ever called him while he's in Twelve are the kids and Effie. And Effie only calls him in the month or so prior to the Games. It's the wrong season for Effie to call him.

In the study, he closes the door and regards the phone warily. Somebody (Snow? Balthamos?) calling him back to the Capitol early? What else could it be? But why would they call him back early? For them to do that, whoever wants his 'services' must have a lot of clout. His hand is shaking as he lifts the handset to his ear.

"Yeah?"

"Haymitch, is that you?"

Haymitch sinks into the chair behind the desk, letting his breath escape in a loud sigh.

"Haymitch?" his caller asks again, her voice becoming even more uncertain.

"Effie," he says, eyes closed. "Have I told you that you have just a really great voice?"

"Thank you, Haymitch," Effie responds warmly. "And you have a very pleasant accent, when your voice isn't slurred from the drink."

Haymitch holds the phone away from his ear and gives it a wide-eyed look. No one else can render him speechless quite as effectively as Effie. Grinning, he lifts the receiver again.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Princess?"

"Well…," Effie's voice trails off, then comes back tentative and feather-light. "There's been a death, Haymitch. I wanted you to hear it from a friend. I know you and he were close."

There's only one person it could be. "Who?"

"It's Chaff, from District 11," Effie tells him.

"Chaff," Haymitch repeats.

"You are going to be okay, aren't you?" There's deep concern in Effie's voice and a hint of shared pain. It bounces off of Haymitch's mind without leaving any impression at all. Effie is starting to say something else when Haymitch hangs up the phone.

Far away in the Capitol, Effie sets her phone back in its cradle and tries to decide whether she should call back. It probably wouldn't do any good. She knows him well enough by now to know that he won't answer. He'll have to work this out alone before he'll answer anyone else.

Haymitch leans forward and puts his hands flat on the desk. He looks down at them, golden hair falling in a curtain on either side of his angular face. For a long time he sits very still.

Chaff. "Chaff," he says again, and freezes. His voice sounds wrong in this big, empty, unfamiliar room. Why did he come here? Oh gods, he should never have come here.

His hands seem to be shaking very slightly. They can't be, though. They're laying flat on the table. They _can't_ be shaking, that doesn't make any sense.

He sits with bowed head and knows that he's too frightened to move. His eyes dart quickly around, but he can see only a narrow sliver of the room bracketed by his hair. Something terrible is here with him. If he moves, even to lift his head, he'll see it.

"Chaff, _please_," he says in a choked voice. "Please let me get out of here."

If he can just get away from this hideous room, he'll be alright. If he can get back to the kids. But he can't move, and he doesn't dare scream. The sound would drive him mad. And no one would come.

His breath shudders in and out in dry, quick pants that are half sobs. How long has he been here? "Do we live here?" he whispers. We. All of us. Together. Here.

With a jerk he begins to sob in hysterical terror, shuddering like a man struck with ague. "_Chaff_." He starts to rock back and forth, then to sway, then to swing violently in the chair, eyes wide and almost unseeing. He slams against the armrests repeatedly, rocking the heavy wooden chair onto two legs and letting it slam back down. Footsteps. Oh, it's _coming_.

The chair topples over with a crash and Haymitch rolls onto his back and scrambles into a corner in a sort of crab-walk. There he presses himself, holding his breath. All coherent thought has ceased. His hands, alien and disconnected, float up in front of him and begin pawing at the air in circling, wheeling motions: warding off gestures. He'll never leave this room.

They're here.

A droning buzz fills his head, and then his mind starts to howl in utterly hopeless accompaniment as smothering blackness descends.


	52. Memory

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter

**Capitol Nights, chapter 52**

Crashing noises come from down the hall, and both Peeta and Katniss turn to look that way in frank alarm.

"What in Snow's name is that?" the director asks, her voice climbing higher with nerves.

"Take Rue," Katniss says urgently, not looking at Peeta as she tries to stuff the half-asleep baby into his arms.

"Katniss-" Peeta takes the baby so she won't be dropped and hoists her up against his shoulder so that he can hold her with one arm. He does this much more quickly and roughly than he's ever handled Rue before. "Katniss, don't!" He barely manages to catch the sleeve of her dress as she darts toward the door. And still she tries to pull free.

"Katniss, stop it!" Peeta half-yells. "Just _listen_ to me for a minute."

She turns her gray eyes on him, full of distress and the need to do something.

"Listen. He's throwing furniture around, that's all. The news about Chaff upset him, and he's having one of his fits. You know he throws things when he gets angry. That's all it is. If you go in there now you'll just end up getting hit with a flying chair." Or worse, his eyes add. "We have to just let him calm down on his own."

"Haymitch has violent fits, you say?" the director asks suddenly, an avaricious gleam appearing in her eyes. She licks her lips and then jerks her head at her photographer.

Peeta steps in front of them, blocking the doorway. "Leave him alone."

"Out of the way, please," the director says, adding the last word purely out of long-ingrained habit. "We'll just get a few photographs and duck right back out. Won't take a minute." She shoves her way past Peeta and hurries down the hall toward the study.

"Don't go in there!" Peeta shouts after her. He tries to block the photographer's progress, but he can't do much with Rue in his arms. She might get bumped or knocked against something, or even dropped.

Katniss has overtaken the director and is holding her off from the study door. "You really can't go in there. He'll attack you," she insists, knowing it's pointless.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" the director exclaims. "I hardly think I need to be afraid of _him_!" Everything about her as she says these words announces her true feelings about anyone from the Districts. She may address them with well-bred politeness, but if they cross her they'll soon find themselves soundly reminded of the difference between their stations in life. Katniss stares at her. A detached, curious part of her mind has time to wonder if this woman thinks she carries some sort of magical pest repellent that makes her invulnerable. Good against stray dogs, especially good against unstable, drunken Twelvers.

The photographer arrives while she's wondering this, and Katniss lets herself be pushed aside without a fight. Maybe the bodies will fit under the floorboards. That will probably be safer than trying to bury them.

She moves into the doorway and takes in the scene. It's quiet now, and there's surprisingly little carnage: only one upended chair. She was sure she'd heard several crashes…

The director is standing back with her arms akimbo and a triumphant smile on her face. The photographer is busily snapping pictures. Haymitch is lying curled up on his side in the corner of the room, unconscious.

"There, you see?" the director crows. "Passed out drunk."

"Yeah, I see. I hope you can fit these pictures in your program. Maybe you should cut out the group pictures. I bet your audience will like these a lot more." She speaks with a biting sarcasm that a ten year old should have no problem picking up on.

"Oh, don't worry," the director says with stunning obtuseness. "The group pictures are _darling_. I wouldn't dream of cutting them. But there's always a market for pictures of our Victors behaving badly." She tips Katniss a knowing, friendly sort of wink. "Just you wait a few more years. You'll be in a few of them yourself, I'm sure."

Peeta has arrived, and they're all together again. Same shit, different room. "Well, this turned out much better than I expected," he murmurs to Katniss.

"We could have hidden the bodies," she murmurs back just as quietly, with a hint of regret.

More loudly, Peeta says, "Rue's getting very sleepy. Shouldn't we move on to the presents now?"

"How time flies," the director sighs. Katniss leads the way out of the room. Peeta lingers behind the others and shuts the door. He looks over at Haymitch, who hadn't been nearly drunk enough to pass out. It's more likely he's knocked himself unconscious. Peeta approaches the man and drops to his knees beside him.

"Haymitch?" he asks. He takes up one of Haymitch's hands, only to have it pulled away almost at once. Haymitch stirs restlessly, waking up more or less on his own. His eyes blink open.

"Peeta? What happened? Why am I on the floor?" He sits up as he talks, and Peeta notices he doesn't wince or put a hand up to his head. His gaze is bright and direct.

"Don't know. I think you must have knocked yourself out," Peeta says. "Does anything hurt?"

"No. Wait… Chaff's dead?" He looks around the room as though searching for his old friend in one of the corners.

"Go home, Haymitch. I think they've got enough pictures of you. I'll be over as soon as they leave. I'll bring you some dinner, okay?"

"Effie didn't tell me how he died."

"Later, Haymitch. Go home. I'll be there soon."

Haymitch nods. He hasn't got the will to argue anymore. It's a stupid question, anyway. How did Chaff die? They killed him, of course. In one way or another, they killed him. Eventually they kill everyone.

He follows Peeta out of the study and down the hall to the front door.

"I'm sorry, Haymitch," Peeta says. Even though it's barely afternoon yet, Haymitch can see the first hints of five o'clock shadow on the kid's face. "I know he was important."

"Don't apologize. Your turn'll come," Haymitch replies. He opens the door and steps out into the sunlight.

There's a wind blowing through the Village, and Haymitch walks with it. It carries him along in its current, down between the double rows of empty houses. It takes him away from the gate and away from the fountain with its concrete angel. He meanders down the path, houses closing him in. His eyes are blank and incurious.

On past the end of the path there's a small grouping of evergreen trees, pines and firs. They've been planted here to camouflage the high stone wall that marks the boundary of the Village. He goes into the trees without a thought.

The wind has died. Haymitch stops. He sits down under one of the trees and leans back against the trunk. And time passes.


	53. Shadow on the Floor

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter

Inspired by Poe's 'The Raven'.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 53**

The storm actually wakes him up. Haymitch rolls out of bed, assessing the room with quicksilver eyes. He's still pleasantly drunk, more fascinated by what's happening outside than wary and paranoid about what might have gotten in here with him while he was asleep. Liquor is the elixir of the gods, it really is. If he can just stay like this all the time, he'll be alright.

Sifting through these thoughts and finding nothing new, Haymitch moves to the window and pushes the heavy green curtains aside. The rain continues to hammer down on the roof, a constant and ineluctable roar. Ineluctable, so he lets it carry him along for a few minutes, his mind blissfully empty as it fills the world.

And- there's lightening. That could mean he's about to lose the lights. And just like that the wariness and distant fear come bubbling up like the taste of bile in his throat and it's almost as bad as being sober. "I hate blackouts," he says lowly to his reflection in the glass. They're like waking nightmares. Time to drown himself back to sleep.

He makes his slow way down the stairs, one hand wrapped around the banister and his face fixed in a grimace of pain and determination. He's gone down these stairs on his ass once or twice, but tonight he walks down them like a grown-up because he just isn't drunk _enough_. "So proud," he taunts himself as he steps flat-footed down another riser. "Look at you. Walking all by yourself. Bet _Rue_ can't do stairs yet." He stops, bowing his head and tightening his grip on the banister and biting hard into his lower lip. When the hatred and shame ebbs enough he takes another step and doesn't say anything, not a damn word. Just got to get to the kitchen, that's all. Liquor will make it alright again.

He casts an involuntary glance over his shoulder, willing back the fear that laps at the edges of his mind. Were stairs always this unsettling? He doesn't like being followed, hasn't for decades. Following is only a half-step away from chasing. Something behind him on the stairs. Fuck. He stops and looks back again, sharply afraid. Nothing. Nothing _yet_. But he's less than halfway down. Shuddering, Haymitch turns again and takes another step. Something coming downstairs after him would catch him in a couple of seconds, if it wanted to. Or, it could take longer. Stairs hurt. One misstep and he'll fall hard. Then the thing behind him could take all the time it wanted.

"Nothing there, you goddamned baby," he snarls. There are two of him sometimes, the man and the pathetic whoring half-man, and the former is again at the end of his ever-loving rope. From the depths of the well, Haymitch thinks that the former isn't really him at all. The shade of Fash, maybe. If he still had a family he guesses he'd live in the Capitol full-time like some of the other Victors do. But they're all dead, and he can't escape them so easily.

But, more to the point, there's nothing on the goddamn stairs, no one in this house but himself.

"No one here," he says aloud, and immediately wishes he hadn't spoken. The defiance in that statement sounds just pathetic.

Walking into the kitchen at long last and dwelling darkly on the preposterous size of this house, he freezes a few steps from the cabinet with his head cocked. His eyes scan the room as he replays the sound. Hallucination? Possible. This soon after waking up, probable. Still…

"Peeta? Katniss?" he calls. But they'd announce their presence. Either of them would have pounded on the door and then come in yelling. Even in the middle of a storm they wouldn't just come in. They couldn't possibly be that _stupid_.

Turning sharply and falling into a more normal, faster, much more painful gait, Haymitch heads for the door. "Honey, you're going to get yourself killed one of these days sneaking around where you don't belong," he calls out, just so the thrice-damned girl will know he's pissed and not at all scared. He's not even tense. Not one damn bit. Except maybe with anger.

The hall is a dimly lit, claustrophobic tunnel interspersed with wall sconces of amber-colored glass. There's no one inside, not yet. Shadows and stillness. That, and a rapping at the door.

He limps slowly down until he stands in front of the portal, canting his head to the side. Not the kids. Peacekeepers don't knock. Who else-

The tapping again, soft and insistent, like someone wants to come in here without being seen or noticed by the outside world. He swallows drily and goes back to his list of people who know him well enough to come looking for him (just the kids) and those who might have business with him. Balthamos wouldn't knock, would he?

He might, a grim voice speaks up in his mind. Hell's bells. Guess you better open the damn door, then, hadn't you?

The goddamn house is more Balthamos's than Haymitch's, anyway. It never really belonged to Haymitch, of course. But for a while that he'd thought would last forever, it had been home. No one used to come in here. Here he'd been able to drink and sleep and scream in utter privacy, unnoticed and undisturbed. He used to spend hours just sitting in this hallway near the door, counting flowers on the wall and thinking and drinking… counting and drinking… drinking. Here, in sight of this door.

Suddenly he just wants to lie down somewhere not-here (he thinks vaguely that the upstairs hall would be alright). Just stop. He'll just lie there. He'll lie there through the ice-pick headaches and the gut-cramping nausea and the shakes that deepen into convulsions so bad he almost looks like an epileptic instead of a pathetic rumdum. Yes, he won't get up. He'll fucking detox himself on the hallway floor, screaming himself hoarse at the monsters that will emerge from every one of those doorways up there, in the dark. And all that, all that without food or water or any damn thing, will probably kill him. But if it doesn't he'll just stay right there in his new home, the part of this poisoned house that he'll gather around himself. And maybe, maybe then he'll starve. He supposes it's possible, although it doesn't seem very fucking likely. Most likely he'll lie there until the train comes again. Back to the Capitol. Won't matter, though. That's the beauty part. Just different places to lie. He can make it so he won't have to care about any of this, ever again. He can just turn away from it. Why not? Intelligence sure as hell isn't required for what he is now.

The rapping again. This damn house. He'd like to watch it burn.

He throws the door wide, stepping forward, stepping into the doorway and then through it so whoever it is will have to jump back on the narrow stoop. He's leaning forward a little, grinning, his steps fast and lumbering. If they don't step back he'll plow them right the fuck over the edge.

"So _sorry_ to keep you waiting!" he declares through his ferocious grin. "I was asleep, passed out, face down in vomit and spilled liquor, having a damn near sexual dream about knives…"

He stops, looking around, scanning the dark ground at the sides of the three stone steps. There's no one. There's nothing. Just darkness, and unbroken stillness.

"Huh," he grunts, shrugging. He retreats back into the house, chest hurting from that shot of adrenalin, both his heart and his brain racing along at a thousand miles a minute. He's got something for that, though. In the kitchen.

He gets four steps down the hall before that tapping starts up again, louder than before.

"Fuck's sake!" Haymitch barks out in startled anger. He whirls clumsily, crashing into the wall and knocking himself a hell of a good one on the sconce protruding there. Still shaking his head and glaring through pain-slitted eyes, he yanks the door open again. And, big as life and twice as ugly, in struts the only yellow rat Haymitch recalls seeing in his entire life. Not running or anything, it treads off down the hall without a glance at him.

Haymitch stares after it and wonders if he's hallucinating. He pretty much has to be, right? He turns confounded gray eyes out on the night. It's still raining a pretty bitch out there, but he can see the grass and the cobblestones of the street well enough. They're not underwater or anything. Murkily he looks around for other fauna that might be planning to move in. Seeing none, he lets the door swing closed.

And just by the way, where is the yellow rat?

It's in the den, sitting up on the mantel over the fireplace, looking at him inscrutably. Taking that in, Haymitch finally realizes that it's not even a rat. It's a half-drowned cat, its fur plastered to its body so that it looks smaller than it usually would. He snorts in amusement. Well, at least _that_ makes more sense.

"Hello, cat," he offers, walking towards it slowly, trying not to scare it. "Stay there, cat. Stay there so I can grab you. That's right…"

The cat lays its ears half-back and just barely hisses.

"Oh, screw you," Haymitch mutters. Rolling his eyes, he switches back to a voice that tries and fails miserably to be wheedling. "Gonna grab you, you ugly, disease-raddled, flea-infested _kitty_. Just gonna grab you and put you back out, that's all."

The cat watches his approach unblinkingly. It lifts one paw from the stone.

Haymitch darts his left hand out, seizing the animal by the back of its neck. The cat utters a howling screech, twists in a full circle, lays his hand open with talon-like claws, and lands lightly on the floor. All of this seems to be part of the same movement. Haymitch hisses and instinctively clasps his injured hand in his right one, but the cat is already perched on the back of his armchair and giving him a forbidding look before the stinging pain even registers in his conscious mind.

"Oh, this is not happening," he says lowly. The cat continues to stare, unblinking and unmoving. It doesn't even have the decency to put its ears back this time. _Shows you, I guess, you clumsy old drunk_, it seems to say.

Huffing out a disgusted sigh, Haymitch slumps down into the other chair and looks moodily into the fire. "You got a name?" he asks, for no reason at all. His mind idly ticks over appropriate names for this thing, each one making him a little angrier: Flea-Bite, Old Scratch, Drunk's Bane. Not that he's going to name the beast. He'll take another grab at it in just a few minutes. Just as soon as there seems to be a point to the gesture.

"Kelsee," the Cat says, quite clearly and unmistakably.

Bolting upright, Haymitch snaps a wide-eyed and half-scared look at his visitor. Still sitting there, still sitting unmoving on the back of the chair. But its eyes are different: they've taken on an aspect both knowing and malicious. From ten feet away they glow with a sickly yellow light.

"Cracking up," he tells himself softly. "Oh, don't you just know it." Slowly and deliberately he leans back in the chair and laces his fingers together over a belly that has recently gone from flat to just slightly concave. He never looks at himself without a shirt on (or with a shirt on, if he can help it). The only intact mirror in the house is the little one set into the front of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. If he did look, he would be able to easily count his ribs by this point. And it might occur to him that those who now have a vested interest in how he looks without a shirt on aren't likely to let this state of affairs stand much longer.

Fortunately or not, he has no inkling of these things just yet. The near constant discomfort in his stomach, the headaches, the increasing clumsiness- these are all just signals that he's probably starting to sober up a little. He needs more liquor, that's all.

He can see how ludicrous this whole situation is, and he grins crookedly at the demon as he stretches his legs out in front of him and casually crosses one ankle over the other. "Five impossible things," he invites the demon, the opening gambit to one of the many games before the Games. Only after he's spoken the incantation does he remember that this was one of Kelsee's favorites. Stubbornly, he plows on. "One: Cats can talk." Easy, that. "Two: Dead girlfriends sometimes come back."

The Cat utters a choppy hissing-coughing sound, fanged jaws gaping open. Horribly, inexorably, it's _laughing_.

"Three… I'm dead. I fell down the goddamn stairs and I'm dead."

The Cat stops laughing and just looks at him. He's losing, because that last one wasn't an Impossible Thing at all.

"Three: Ghosts are real." No, fuck, that's the same as the second one. Was there really a time when he'd played this round after round, for fun? And what the hell has he done to his brain since then? "Four," he declaims, rising from his place and taking a step towards the Cat. "The Districts can defeat the goddamn fucking _Capitol_!" His voice rises defiantly, almost to a full-throated shout in the nighttime stillness of the Village, and it's just him and the kids who live here, sure, but the place is patrolled, kept under surveillance, at least one Peacekeeper is out there somewhere, circling, and in that one uncalculated moment he shouts this Impossible Thing for the whitecoats to hear and come if they will.

In the same instant a deafening crash of thunder shakes the world, rattling the bottles on the end table. And in its aftermath, all of the caution and wariness and animal-cunning that's gotten him this far down the path reasserts itself. He remembers his place in this, and the role he must play. If they tortured him, how much _would_ he say? Would he give up Plutarch? Finnick? Could they make him speak the names of the kids, or of Effie? _I'd bite my goddamn tongue in half first_, he thinks, but there's a horrible uncertainty in the assertion. He's very much aware in this moment, as aware as he's ever been, that he's weak, and he's addled, and he's a coward.

"Just shut up a minute," he snaps at the silent Cat perched on the chair back. He listens, rabbit-still, his hand curling around the haft of his knife as he draws it out of his pocket.

The thunder saved him, it seems, or maybe it wasn't even that. They're not there all the time. On a night like this they almost certainly aren't. The ones on duty tonight are probably clustered around a fireplace at their headquarters in the Justice Building, throwing darts and taking turns with some hungry woman in the back room. And even when there is someone here they mainly circle the outskirts and watch the gate, hoping to nab trespassers for a couple of days in the stocks. Still…

"Still, pretty fucking stupid," he tells himself. Even if it is an Impossible Thing.

"Five." And five is always something you can never do. Five: I could move to Town and become a merchant. Five: I could move to Town and _marry_ a merchant. Both of them laughing, knowing damn well that their futures are in the pitch-black shafts, knowing and laughing in the teeth of that dark foreknowledge. That had been back when they'd been immortals.

"I can save the kids," he says, smiling ironically. _Didn't_ he escape the mines, after all? Hell, didn't she? Not exactly to Town, though…

The Cat stares down at him, seeming to smile. It has said all it will say already, all that is in its soul, wrapped up in that chuffing laugh that sounds a little like red agony and a struggle to breathe. There has to be more, there _were_ words, but whoever was speaking has left him, now.

"Leave," he mutters, looking up at the Cat. "Go on, get the fuck out, if you've got nothing else to say." Everyone slips away like grains of golden sand, receding faster and faster the tighter he tries to clasp them, until there's no solid ground left at all, nowhere for him to stand and nowhere even to hide. The Cat can take any one of almost a dozen faces, ephemeral as it is. It's all the _same_. He can barely call up what they looked like, anymore. And that's killing them twice, because there's no one but him left to remember any of them.

"Kelsee," the Cat says again in its hissing voice.

"Yeah, her," Haymitch says, envisioning a dead teenaged girl that he knows is the wrong one.

The Cat will leave, he figures, as soon as the rain stops. He guesses he'll just let it stay until then. He's too slow, too clumsy, too damn addled to catch it. He looks at it again, giving up on the dead girl for the moment, and favors it with a shaky smile that is strikingly different from any expression he'd let another person glimpse. There's nothing hard-edged or cynical in it, nor does sardonic laughter seem to lurk at the edges of his mercurial gray eyes in this unguarded moment. It's only a cat, only a cat and his own sick mind and the liquor combing to give it its one-word refrain. And it's still kind of funny, isn't it? Sure it is. Just a scraggedly half-drowned cat with an attitude, waiting to see if he wants to go another round or if it can start grooming the running water off its coat.

It's only a stray cat that will disappear in the morning, and he's still drunk, and he can talk to it if he wants to. Just to pass the time. And just suppose… well, just suppose ghosts are real?

Careful there, lad…

Her eyes had been almost fiery, he suddenly remembers, when she was mad. Palest brown, they had been, a lot of gray in them like almost all the Seam kids, but in her it gave the rather magical effect of frost over dead leaves. Intimidating eyes, at least they had been at first, cold even when she was happy. Really the last place you'd expect to see embers. How could he have ever forgotten eyes like those?

The Cat's eyes are sickly yellow, and they burn into him. He leans back into the leather of the chair, turning his head and listening to the minute scratches of diamonds against the soft surface. This is who he is now, (hated) diamonds and (sullied) gold, and all of the Others are dead. Scattered ashes dumped who-knows-where, and nothing remains. So go on and forget them, because it's just too fucking late for this nonsense. And forgetting them would be a mercy.

"Have you come to tell me to forget her, Cat?" he asks, wondering if he actually could.

"Kelsee," the Cat replies; the Cat demurs.

"Well, who asked you," Haymitch returns furiously and nonsensically. It's the truth, anyway. "Damned fool, sitting here talking to a _cat_. The fuck did you expect?" he continues to himself. He gets to his feet, finally done with this folly, ready to give it up for the night. He means to tell the cat that he's going to throw it out on its ass just as soon as he wakes up again, but instead he asks: "Will I save the kids?"

"Kelsee," the Cat replies; the Cat reminds.

"Fuck," Haymitch says, his voice breaking. That about says it all, doesn't it?

The confirmation almost crushes him, even though he's always known that answer. "Enough," he says, pleading now. "Enough." There's silence between them for a moment, and perhaps now he can leave this haunted room. Instead, he asks: "Will they die, though, Cat? Will it be just… just… Or will he kill them?"

"Kelsee," the Cat replies; the Cat condemns.

Finally silent, numbed and distantly hurt, Haymitch reaches the kitchen. He opens the cabinet and takes out a stout mongrelized bottle that Katniss put there at some point in the last week or so. He sits at the table and tips it up and swallows quick, two, three, four times before relenting and setting it down long enough to get his breath back.

The Cat has followed him. It jumps nimbly to the top of the fridge, sits with its tail curled over its paws, ignores the water still dripping from its fur. It sits unmoving and looks down over him with effulgent eyes.


	54. Heavy is the Head

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 54**

Bent over nearly double, Peeta holds onto Rue's tiny hands and tries not to squeeze.

"Daee!" Rue protests in her high-pitched cry that's so recently become speech, actual _words_. She's talking! _Daddy_, Peeta mentally translates. She said 'daddy'. He feels a large and rather silly grin stretch across his face, displacing the look of worry and anticipation. She's been saying that and maybe four other words for a week now, but it's still a novelty.

"Sorry, baby," he says, loosening his hold slightly.

Rue takes a couple of wobbling steps as he moves with her, her elfin face rapt with concentration. She's wearing a romper of some gold shimmery fabric, softer even than cotton. It was a gift from some Capitolite, of course. You can't really find baby clothes in 12. Babies go in just diapers during the warm months and get wrapped up in blankets during the cold ones. Every time Katniss takes an interest in Rue the first thing she does is undress her.

Peeta can't resist, though. They have boxes of baby clothes, everything from spangled and ruffled nightgowns to formal dresses with lacings of tiny pearls all over them. And what's the harm in it? Who is it hurting, exactly, to dress his daughter up in these soft and pretty things? Just in the privacy of their home, who is it hurting? And shouldn't Rue have the best they can give her? Sometimes he doesn't understand Katniss at all.

Which isn't a fair statement, Peeta chides himself. Okay. She doesn't want to look at their daughter and be reminded of the Capitol. He gets that. But he just wishes, sometimes, that Katniss would look at their daughter and see _Rue_.

"Ready?" he asks, half-hoping she'll say she isn't, don't let go. And it's a little crazy to feel like this, especially after all he's seen and done in the last couple of years. Maybe that's why Katniss can't seem to get excited about this. But, oh, when Rue falls she _cries_. Sometimes just a couple of little sobs, if he gets there quick enough, but sometimes she really bawls. And every time she does that he wonders if she maybe broke something, if she's bruised, if she'll be too scared to try again.

"Yesh," she says, heedless of his anxiety.

"Okay. Okay, here goes." Peeta silently counts to three and lets go, bracing himself.

Rue takes a step, her arms held out to her sides like little wings, her eyes alight. She takes another step as Peeta stares and forgets to breathe. She windmills her arms and takes one more step before flopping over and sitting down with a tiny muffled thump. She stares up at her father with wide, startled eyes and her chin quivers.

Unfreezing, Peeta dives down and scoops her up. He's laughing in totally unaffected delight and Rue looks at him with her mouth hanging open and then begins to laugh with him, the unpleasantness of falling cleanly excised from her little mind.

"You did it, baby!" Peeta crows. "You walked! Wait 'til we tell your mother!"

"Tell me what?" Katniss asks, taking in the scene from the doorway. As it almost always does, the sight of them together draws a small smile from her. He's a great father, she thinks in tones of relief. Oh, good. Good for Rue.

"She walked!" Peeta announces. He looks at Katniss's muted smile and the strange wistfulness in her eyes and feels his own happiness begin to ebb. She should have been watching. He should have made sure she didn't miss Rue's first steps. He presses a quick kiss to his daughter's cheek and sets her down. "Sorry," he says genuinely. "She'll do it again soon. I should have called you. I just didn't think."

Katniss shakes her head. "It's okay. She'll do it again soon, like you said."

"Maybe she'll do it again now!" Peeta declares. He sees the look that flashes through Katniss's gray eyes, knows he's pushing too hard. But he plows on because there's just no connection. It had been just as if he'd said: "The most beautiful cardinal landed on the fountain just now. I wish you'd seen it." Her eyes had slid briefly to Rue at the mention of the baby's name, then scittered right away again. Like their daughter is some- some _stain_ on the carpet or something. Something she'd rather not look at.

"Really, Peeta, it's fine," she says, casually dismissing both this milestone in Rue's life and his own excitement.

What can he possibly do about this? He'd gone along with the name when he'd seen she really meant it, gone along with it and privately started planning how he'd justify it in interviews. What else can he do, though? She's a baby. There aren't even any real decisions to be made about how to raise her yet. _You know, more decisions I could give in on so that she might look with favor on the child_, he thinks unhappily.

"No, sit. I'm sure she'll do it again," he insists.

Relenting, Katniss strides over to a chair and regards her husband with a troubled mien. He's still trying so hard. Like last night, after they put the baby down. As always, there'd been that nearly maddening hesitance and over-done gentleness in his touch at first. But that she's gotten used to. He needs her to set the pace, that's all. She supposes some men are just like that. He catches on quick enough, and after that he does just fine. Better than fine, mostly. But afterwards… hell, it's like she's glass again. And she hates that, and she knows there's just no way to say so without hurting him. Still… every damn time. She just doesn't think she'll be able to not say anything much longer. She always seems to end up burning him when he comes nigh.

Thinking of this, she makes a mental note to drink some of that awful-tasting moon-tea; they'd both gotten a little carried away last night, and she's sure as hell not giving Snow another hostage. Not until he forces her to, anyway. She looks down at Rue with stony eyes: Rue in that sodding gold romper. _Sorry, kid. We didn't have any choice_. Someday she guesses she'll have to go on and say that out loud; in a couple of years, when Rue will understand the words.

Peeta takes Rue under the arms and sets her on her feet before taking her hands again. "Come on, Rue, walk for mommy," he coaxes.

Katniss winces slightly. "Wish you wouldn't call me that."

"You _are_ her mother," Peeta points out reasonably (or pig-headedly).

"Yeah, I guess there can't be any doubt about that," Katniss concedes with a spiky little smile.

Rue isn't having any of it. She can sense something going wrong between the twin gods of her microverse, even though She speaks calmly and He answers with the smile in his voice. Something going wrong again; He isn't happy anymore, and She is sad and maybe something more than sad. Rue tries to plop back down, is held up, and begins to cry instead.

Peeta picks her up, lays her against his shoulder and begins to pace up and down with her.

"I'll get her bottle," Katniss says, rising (gracefully, beautifully) from her chair.

"Thanks," Peeta acknowledges softly.

Katniss stands and watches him for a moment. Then she goes to him and puts her arms around him, being careful of the baby. She kisses him lightly and then leans back to look at him. "Hey," she says, her tone as soft as his. "Kids never perform on cue." She shrugs, looks away, the softness melting away from her voice as she strives for a safe distance again. "That's what my mother says, anyway."

He smiles at her, all the unspoken things hanging right behind his eyes (does he think she can't see them?). "Yeah. I just wish you'd seen."

Uncomfortable now, she steps back. "No big deal, okay? I'm going to get some tea, before I forget." She understands. She does. She's not good at this at all. She's maybe even as bad as Peeta's own mother. Well, surely not _that_ bad. She wouldn't actually hurt Rue, or anything. But she just doesn't think she can love Rue, either. Some days she stands over the crib while the baby sleeps (she thinks if she's going to feel it at all, it will almost certainly come to her while Rue's asleep). Nope, nothing. She's got nothing. Her capacity for caring about others seems to be just big enough to completely encompass her sister. There's little enough left for Peeta, and nothing at all left for this baby neither of them wanted. And if she can't even make herself care about her, how will she call up the strength and courage to protect her?

She tips wide, shocked, frightened, hurt eyes up to Peeta's face again, only meaning to tell him she _can't, don't ask me to_. But he's looking back at her, so almost-nearly-loved, and feckless, and worried. Katniss snaps back to herself like a sprung rubber band. He's certainly not going to step in for her. Neither is Haymitch, not now, not anymore. _You just step up, damn you_, she tells herself fiercely. _Step up_.

"What's wrong?" Peeta asks.

"Nothing," she says coldly. "Going to make some tea." She turns on her heel and leaves them there. Let Peeta take care of the babe. _That_ he can do, at least. It's something.


	55. John

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter

Note: This is another M-rated chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 55**

The very first words the john says to him are, "Get undressed and lie face down on the bed."

Haymitch raises an eyebrow and bites back the bitterly sarcastic words that rise to his mind: So much for the acclaimed manners of Capitolites. Wordlessly he complies with the command, dropping his clothes to the floor at his feet. This is where every appointment ends up, anyway. Just as well to cut to the chase.

He lies prone on top of the blankets, propping himself up on his elbows to keep an eye on the fine gentleman who'll shortly be buggering him.

"Put the pillows under your hips." Not one to waste words, this guy. "Spread your legs. Wider, damn you!" A hard slap lands on his ass.

Haymitch growls a low expletive into the blankets and forces himself to relax. Others have said and done a lot worse. There's nothing this asshole can do to him that will make much of an impression at this point.

The bed shifts as the man climbs up behind him. Haymitch hears him unzip his fly and listens as he snaps open the cap on a travel-sized bottle of lotion. He lets the familiar sounds ease him into a disinterested state and waits for it to begin. Rough hands grab his hips and the john shoves his cock in with a loud grunt. It's too sudden, even though he was expecting it. Haymitch clenches his hands in the sheets and closes his eyes tightly as he muffles the pain-filled gasps and curses his body wants to voice into a single drawn-out hiss. Behind him, ol' John shoves more of himself in, his grunts giving way to sighs. The sighs are worse, almost moans. Then he begins to talk.

"Yeah, take it, you slut. You filthy whore. You like that, don't you? Say you like it."

"I like it," Haymitch says, trying to make his voice as flat and toneless as possible. It hurts, even with the lube it hurts, and the pain adds a roughness to his voice that he can do nothing about. He closes his eyes again and bites the flesh of his forearm.

"Yeah, you like it, you pussy. You trash. You'll spread your legs for anyone, won't you? You cheap, dirty slut. Girly boy. Cock sucker. You don't care who you get it from." John delivers his unending stream of abuse, all the while sawing in and out with long, even thrusts. It's pretty repetitive stuff, mostly. He doesn't require any further replies. Apparently hearing Haymitch say he likes it once is enough to fuel his fantasy.

This is new. Plenty of his appointments talk during sex, but none of them are like this. As the thrusts get quicker and shorter the insults get viler. It ends suddenly. The john shoves into him and cums with a final cry: "Piece of shit _whore_!" He collapses onto Haymitch's back, murmuring an exhausted litany of, "You're disgusting, slut, eager little slut…" as his cock goes through its final spasms. Haymitch lies still beneath him, just hoping the man isn't going to go to sleep on top of him. That can't have been much more than twenty minutes. What the hell is he supposed to do for the next two and a half hours? Well, he supposes there'll be time for a round two. If this son of a bitch would just get off him, maybe then he'd roll over and fall asleep and it would really be over.

The john rolls off him and sits up. He wipes his cock off on the blanket and tucks it back into his briefs. Only then does Haymitch realize he didn't even get undressed, which is another first.

"Thank me," he demands.

Haymitch rolls onto his side to see the man clearly and lets several seconds pass before he deadpans, "Thanks."

"Get your clothes on and get out of here," the john says brusquely, not looking at him.

"What?" Haymitch asks incredulously. He sits up, then stands and snatches his briefs off the floor. "Uh, you've still got more than two hours, so…"

"Get lost," the john snaps.

Haymitch closes his mouth with a click. He dresses quickly, clumsily, all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop. He finishes buttoning his shirt and the john still hasn't said anything else. Fuck, the guy's actually going to let him go. Haymitch shoves his feet into his shoes, eyes on the door.

"Hey."

Haymitch lets his breath out in a sigh, his whole body slumping, making him look shorter and slighter than before. Stupid whore, he chastises himself bleakly. Of course it isn't over.

"Your money's on the dresser," the john says.

Haymitch looks at him uncomprehendingly.

"Take it and get out," the john says, pointing. Haymitch looks where he's bidden. A small stack of bills waits on the dresser's polished surface. He picks it up with a shaking hand, counting automatically. 150 marks.

"I'm already paid for. You don't have to…" he says, faltering. This is… this is just… he doesn't even know what this is.

"Consider it a tip."

Not knowing what to do, Haymitch shoves the money into his trouser pocket and heads for the door. He has to try twice to grab the doorknob. His hands are shaking like he hasn't had a drink in two days. He shambles out into the hall without looking back.

In the elevator it suddenly crashes down on him with the impact of a load of bricks. He sobs at the intensity and suddenness of it. Jabbing the stop button, he steps out into a random and thankfully deserted hallway and sinks down against the wall, hiding his face in his hands as his whole body shakes. For a while he thinks it might even be possible for the shame to kill him, to shock his heart into stopping.

After a long time, he takes the money out of his pocket. He looks at it, spreading it out on the floor and recounting it. Rationally, he should take it back to 12. Leave it in the Hob or something. It's money, and he knows there are plenty in 12 who need it. Doesn't matter where it came from. They won't know it's money he got for letting a man fuck him and saying he liked it.

He piles the bills into a stack and picks them up. He starts to tear the stack in half. Then he stops, folds it over, and pushes it back into his pocket.

Balthamos would be so proud of you, his mind sneers. He stands up like a man in pain, leaning against the wall. He walks down the hall until he finds a bench in an alcove, partially hidden by a potted fern the size of a small tree. He sits and twists the cuff around his wrist.


	56. Doppelganger

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Sorry this is two days late. I had the next chapter ready, and then this thread turned up at the last minute and demanded to be added. I'll post the next chapter a bit early to make up for this one being late.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 56**

Effie eyes a bright green wig with the acquisitiveness of a crow looking at a snippet of ribbon. Her fingers play over Haymitch's arm before she tears her gaze away from the newly found treasure to smile up at him. "What do you think?" she asks, a bit tentatively.

Haymitch looks doubtfully at the lurid headgear, trying to think of a response not wholly discouraging. "_Green_, Effie?" he tries.

"Why do I ask you?" Effie murmurs rhetorically, her attention already back on the display.

Haymitch shrugs and looks around, wishing he could be simply bored and irritated by all this. That would be the natural response to wig shopping with Effie, an ordeal he'd never imagined would constitute part of his life. This really _shouldn't_ be part of his life. It's a bit too much. He ought to be planning ways to punish her for this. If he got drunk enough, maybe he could do some creative modeling with the brighter wigs…

The tension and the carefully suppressed fear nix any chance of revenge, though. Big day today. Big, big day. Effie has no idea just how big.

"How about those?" he says, nudging her and pointing to a tier of various shades of blond with flowers set in them.

Effie gives him a suspicious look, sure he's teasing her. "Those are for children," she says slowly when he doesn't respond to the look.

Haymitch sighs, exasperated. "Get the green one, then. It matches your eyes, I guess. Because hair color _should_ match eye color."

Effie's expression softens. "I know you're bored. Why don't we go to Interesting Diversions next? You could pick out a flask to match next year's Reaping dress."

"That's the actual name of the store?" he asks, snickering.

"Yes, it is," Effie says with great equanimity. Then her control breaks and she giggles, raising a delicate hand to hide her mirth. "It's not funny!" she insists in a high-pitched whisper-laugh.

"Quick, Effie: first three things that pop into your pretty little mind when I say… _interesting diversions_," he prods her, grinning.

"Oh… _stop_!" she gets out, laughing helplessly and slapping weakly at his arm. "Your… your cut-crystal flask… came from there!"

With a burlesque look of horror, Haymitch draws the offending item out of his jacket pocket. He sets it on the shelf next to the green wig and takes a large step back. "I'll bring one from home next time. Worst that'll have lurking in it is dirt and maybe chicken crap."

"Ignorant savage," Effie opines, her eyes dancing with merriment.

"Guess it must be so." Haymitch shrugs and looks around again. No one's watching them. All of the other patrons are busy in their perusal of the wares, and none are within ten feet of them. They won't get a better opportunity.

"Going to find the men's room," he says to Effie. "I'll meet you there."

Effie doesn't say anything, doesn't even look at him. The not-looking is fine. The not-saying is ominous as a roll of thunder when you have your arms full of liquor crates and more than a mile to walk back to the Village. Her hand tightens on his arm and he thinks bleakly, _Here we go. I knew she couldn't_. He can play off his statement, and probably whatever she's about to say. But he can't leave her here if she's lost her nerve.

Then Effie turns and plants a quick kiss on his cheek, startling as a static shock. "Don't be late," she says, looking intensely up into his eyes. But at least her voice sounds okay. "I want a table on the terrace." She lets go of his arm and starts pointedly looking around for a sales associate to take the wig to a dressing room for her.

Haymitch turns and walks out of the shop without a backwards glance, ostensibly searching for one of the self-cleaning pay toilets that stand unobtrusively on every street in this section of the city. There's one at the next corner, but luck is with him so far. The little 'occupied' sign is lit. Trying to slow his heart a little, Haymitch walks on down the street and turns into the next side street.

He walks twenty blocks, navigating solely by a memorized map and a memorized set of directions. Even with the gnawing worry about Effie and the all-pervading fear of being caught, he doesn't make a single wrong turn. This had been what most of his latest session with Plutarch had consisted of- the part of it he'd been awake for, anyway. Plutarch had had him recite the directions at least two dozen times, and draw the map by memory on scraps of paper Plutarch had then set on fire one by one. The ringleaders are all worked up about this one.

Stepping out of a nameless alley too narrow to even hold the usual row of trash cans, he finally spies the rendezvous site. He doesn't allow his steps to falter, but his lips quirk in a wry smile. 'Course, he'd _known_, but to fully appreciate this you gotta be there. It's a boutique with a red and black striped sign, red bunting around the show window, and the window itself painted with a very feminine tiger and a pointedly male wolf. These two animals are eyeing each other in a way that leaves no room at all for an innocent interpretation. In white spiky letters above this unlikely couple is the store's name: _Wild Things_. This is, of course, a _very_ inconspicuous place for a faction of an underground resistance movement to meet.

Haymitch can't help casting a furtive look around before stepping into the store. If a single so-called reporter for one of the entertainment glossies saw him go in here… _Well, if they did then you're dead_, he tells himself with counterfeit resolve. Not a damn thing to be done about it now.

Of course, he might well have earned himself a questioning by someone several times over before he even got here. Twenty blocks he'd walked, a lot of it on busy streets, in full daylight, with no disguise, on a day when his only official reason for being in the Capitol is Effie. No one had challenged him, of course. Doesn't mean no one noticed. At least a few people undoubtedly did notice the notorious senior Victor of District 12 pass them on the sidewalk today.

The shop is mostly animal-themed lingerie, although one may also purchase such things as wolf masks that cover the entire head, and various kinds of tails. There aren't any customers in sight, nor does he see the proprietor.

Haymitch steps through a dense beaded curtain behind an owl display and someone immediately lays hold of his arm and squeezes. "Don't do that!" a voice hisses even as Haymitch twists his arm out of the tight grasp and shoves the barely seen person away from himself. A surprised little "oof!" noise comes from the floor.

Haymitch's eyes are adjusting to the near-darkness; he can make out two women, one sitting on the floor and staring up at him while the other stands behind her.

"Come on, quickly," the upright one hisses, pulling her compatriot to her feet. They turn and lead the way down a flight of stairs. What little light there is quickly diminishes as they descend. Holding onto the banister, Haymitch tries to distract himself by admiring the not-inconsiderable view. The women are of the young, perfectly proportioned sort that become more and more common the closer one gets to the presidential manor. Tiny waists, shapely rears, long legs. They'll be equally impressive from the front. The one he'd inadvertently knocked down is directly in front of him, dressed in a halter top and bikini bottoms covered by a very sheer sari. If they weren't descending into a lightless pit where they could all be trapped by a single Capitol Guard with stupid ease, he could really get into a view like this.

At the foot of the stairs there's a door that isn't made of strings of beads. The leading woman ushers them through before closing the door and turning the deadbolt.

"Whisper. This isn't sound-proofed," she tells them. She meets Haymitch's gray eyes with her bright orange ones. "Hello, Timerian. I'm Tamerlane, and this is Samarcand." She waves at her scantily clad friend, who curtsies. "We're going to do your prep. You can tell me if something makes you uncomfortable, but we really have to hurry. So try to bear with us, if you can. Okay?"

"There isn't a single damn things you can do that is even going to be a blip on my radar, little darling," Haymitch says aggressively. "I don't know who told you that you were intimidating, but you must be a hell of an easy lay if you're _that_ gullible."

"Sit down, then, and we'll get started," Tamerlane says tightly, narrowing her eyes. She juts her chin in the direction of a chair and table set up directly under the ceiling light.

"Bring it," Haymitch says, dropping gracelessly into the chair.

"Quite a jump you gave up top, for such a macho guy," Samarcand snipes, picking up a comb.

"Leave it, Samarcand," Tamerlane says soothingly. "We have to focus."

"I'm going to _focus_," Samarcand snaps. She begins to comb Haymitch's hair briskly and expertly, twisting it into a top-knot with one hand and snatching a black elastic with the other. "He's a boorish, uncouth, posturing lout." She takes a deep breath. "That's all I'm going to say. Now, where's the wig cap?"

"Here," Tamerlane says simply, passing it to her.

"I don't like people fucking _grabbing_ me in the _dark_," Haymitch growls defensively. Neither woman replies, and after a moment he mutters, "Sorry. About the 'easy lay' bit."

"Thank you," Tamerlane says graciously. "Hands flat on the table, please." Samarcand doesn't say anything, but she flashes a smile at him before reaching for the wig.

Barely twenty minutes later Haymitch steps out into the store again. There are a couple of people browsing the racks now, but their casual glances slide off him almost at once. He's no one of note. No one interesting. Best of all, no one memorable. Awesome.

He's dressed mostly in black, the clothes so perfectly fitted that whoever provided them must have been given his measurements. The cuffs of the trousers have a cut flare adorned with deep red embroidery, so it kind of looks like bloody slashes in his ankles are gaping open as he walks. The same designs cover the lower half of his long-sleeved shirt. His hands are clad in black silk gloves, the backs of which are covered in a mosaic of dark red glass. They've given him a mustache and a full beard that comes to a sharp point at the base of his throat, both dyed deep red. The wig is made up of hundreds of thin, red, shoulder-length braids. As a finishing touch they'd painted the diamonds along his ear with a red polish to make them look like rubies, although he'd been told to let the wig hide his ear as much as possible. In his right hand he carries a black walking stick topped with a silver dog head. The dog appears to be laughing.

Some six blocks away he comes to the ice cream parlor that is the next station in this business. He stops near the door, looking around casually and twirling the walking stick. And before he even has time to start feeling very, very conspicuous- not to mention incredibly stupid- a girl approaches with a bright smile lighting her face. "I've been waiting, father. Right where you said."

"Come, Camille," Haymitch replies, calling up a smile in response. His posing-for-photographers smile, but it seems to work well enough. When he offers her his left hand she takes it unhesitatingly. She looks about eleven, but could be as young as nine. And they're going to her certain death.

Camille never lets go of his hand as they draw near to their destination. She keeps pace with him, not hanging back even as they pass through the gates into the park. Her features are composed, except for her wide and watchful eyes.

Haymitch looks down at her, wondering how much of this she understands. He knows nothing about her except where she would be waiting for him. He doesn't know how old she is, or her real name, or even where she's from. He doesn't know if she's a naïve kid who thinks this will be an adventure, if she dreams of being immortalized as a hero, or if some zealous parent or guardian volunteered her for the suicide mission.

However she ended up here, he knows they'll kill her. Not today, unless someone fucks up royally or they have spectacularly bad luck. Plutarch says they might make it a couple of weeks before the switch is uncovered. But two weeks is nothing to a girl this young. They probably won't torture her; no one would tell a little girl anything of use to the enemy. And Haymitch is sure they told her _that_, even if nothing else was ever explained or justified to her. They would have told her over and over that it won't hurt.

And then Camille does stop, staring down the path. They've arrived, and so have the people they've come to meet. At a bend in the path, walled in by tall hedges on both sides, two scarlet-uniformed Avoxes watch them with the blank lack of expression that's so characteristic of the slaves that serve in the presidential manor. They don't smile, or look stern, or bored. If anything, they look faintly expectant. These two are both young women. One rests her hand proprietarily on the shoulder of a young blonde who could easily be Camille's twin. Both girls have the same hairstyle, braids pinned up in a deceptively simple-looking fashion. The Avoxes' girl wears a jeweled butterfly pin in hers. Their dresses are not the same, but Camille's could be described as an only slightly less expensive and less fine version of her doppelganger's. Standing between her nanny and her hand-maid, Cordelia Snow looks at and through the newcomers with none of the wonder or fear that shines from Camille's face.

"Camille," Haymitch prompts, twitching her hand. Camille tips her face up to his, and for a few still and silent seconds she begs him to take her away. Eyes stained bright blue just days ago pierce him. Camille shakes her head minutely, but she doesn't make a sound. She knows what's at stake.

"Come, Camille," Haymitch says in negation. He can't drag her over there, even if he would. Ultimately this scheme depends upon her cooperation. She has to consent to be killed for the cause. Were it possible to simply pick her up and toss her over the side of the ship if she balked at walking the plank, Haymitch knows he would have orders to do so. And he really doesn't want to know if he would follow those orders.

Camille shuts her eyes for a beat, working to put her mask back in place. Then she says, "Yes, father." She walks forward again, leaving behind her last chance.

Reaching the Avoxes, Haymitch produces a plain wooden box from his pocket, no bigger than a match box. He hands it over to the Avox who doesn't have her hand on the girl's shoulder, and the woman nods and pockets it with no change in her expression at all. The other one unclips the butterfly from her charge's golden hair and puts it in her own pocket. She'll fix it into Camille's hair once Cordelia is safely out of sight. Then she guides the president's granddaughter forward and Haymitch takes Cordelia's hand as Camille watches mutely.

"You'll come with me, Cordelia," Haymitch says, firmly and reassuringly, trying to sound as much like Peeta as he can- and as little like himself as possible. He's half-sure she'll ask who he thinks he is and demand that he let go of her at once. Instead, she looks at him with a drugged, pitiful curiosity before losing focus and going back to looking at nothing in particular. She's doped to the eyeballs with something called Devil's Breath that's supposed to make her very compliant and suggestible. Capitol drugs. The wonders they can work, Haymitch thinks with bitter amusement.

Camille joins the Avoxes. The two women turn and walk away, and Camille steps up her pace to walk in front of them, where anyone would expect to see Cordelia. Ten paces ahead of the women, her walk becomes unhurried and casual. Her step and posture proclaim her sense of pride and power, still mostly unconscious at this age. Whatever she does or doesn't understand about her new situation, someone trained her well for this.

Haymitch and Cordelia walk off in the opposite direction; very soon they are lost in the warren of side streets and increasingly narrow alleys.


	57. Better Element

Note: Okay, heavy T for this one I guess. Everything's pretty much off-screen, but still. Maybe M for psychological damage.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 57**

It looks for all the world like the same ostentatious suite-sized bedroom, although it probably isn't. Same giant round bed, same mirror on the ceiling, same blandly smiling man holding a glass of something and looking at him expectantly.

"How are you this evening?" Plutarch asks.

Haymitch shuts the door to the lavish hotel room a bit harder than is necessary and favors Plutarch with a sharp-edged smile. "Oh, I don't know. Good?" He waits, but Plutarch says nothing and the silence spins out. Hell, it's as likely an answer as any. "Good," he affirms.

"I would have guessed flustered and churlish," Plutarch says in measured reply. "Come sit down and have a drink. It will make you calmer." He gestures to the bed, making no move to sit down, himself. The lines are clearly drawn.

Haymitch saunters over to the bed and drops down onto it, dipping his chin towards Plutarch in sarcastic acknowledgement of those all-important lines. "'Calm' may be an understatement. Unconscious, passed out, insensible…"

"I didn't invent the system," Plutarch chides him. He waits, and then prods, "Haymitch?"

"No, I guess you didn't," the man says belatedly.

Plutarch had promised himself he would be patient today, but he can already feel his irritation rising. Haymitch has that effect on him, and on everyone else from what he's heard.

"In any case, I was offering you a regular drink. Orange and vodka?"

"Straight vodka," Haymitch says.

Plutarch hands him the drink. "I have a job for you."

"Super. Who am I going to be killing this time?" Neither of them mentions Camille, who is almost certainly still alive somewhere in the mansion, trying to keep out of Snow's direct line of sight for a little longer. Plutarch had made it clear they would never mention her or Cordelia again until they were out of the Capitol. That suits Haymitch fine. Nothing the spymaster can say is going to erase that tiny shake of the head.

"No one at all." Plutarch withdraws the device from his inner pocket and holds it up in front of Haymitch. It is a very thin tube, a little over half a centimeter long and just a couple of millimeters wide. One end sharpens to a needle point. "This is a 'mite'. You'll be planting it somewhere on the body of your next client." Haymitch sits forward, his eyes glittering with sudden interest. "See the sharp end? Slide it under the skin, then press on the spot for at least six seconds to close the wound."

"How the hell am I supposed to do that without him noticing?"

"This particular fellow likes to be tied up and blind-folded. He'll probably want you to reenact ones of the kills you made in the arena on him."

Haymitch sits back. "Bloody hell."

Plutarch smiles wryly. "The wound will close completely, but try to pick somewhere on his back."

"What is wrong with you people?"

"Not all Capitolites are like that, you know. The forced prostitution trade doesn't always attract the better element."

"Present company excepted, of course. Why'd you have to bring Effie into this?" Haymitch asks, changing the subject. He slips a hand into the pocket of his coat, the movement made insignificant by his unwavering gray eyes. When stared at like that, a man has no choice but to return the compliment. "Ten thousand other women in the city. Why'd you have to pick her?"

"Effie was willing." Plutarch shrugs. "Why not her?"

Haymitch wraps his fingers around the hilt of the knife, still concealed from the other man. But there's something here, isn't there, beyond the studiously nonchalant answer. Effie was a bad choice. She can't be expected to keep a secret, not under the least amount of pressure. Subterfuge is counter to her very nature. Sooner or later she'll be caught, and when she is she'll sing. Much as Haymitch hates this officious, supercilious prick, sitting there all soft and self-satisfied on his well-padded ass (no one ought to be that pudgy, he'd had a little cousin who'd starved to death before her fourth birthday and no one should be that damn _pudgy_), he knows Plutarch is a far cry from stupid.

"There was no one else?" he asks slowly. "Is that it? It is, isn't it?"

"These things don't concern you," Plutarch says flatly, but for half a second dismay flickers in his eyes. Haymitch the Addled isn't supposed to be able to read him like that.

"How many Capitolites are part of this would-be rebellion?" Haymitch asks. "Ten?" Plutarch has retreated completely beyond his bland façade, looking at Haymitch patiently and saying nothing. But that doesn't matter. Haymitch smiles in the teeth of that bland mask, because it's one of those moments. The surface of Plutarch's mind is laid bare, thoughts floating around in the swirls and eddies of feeling, visible as fish just a few feet beneath the surface of a clear stream. Fuck's sake. Effie and Plutarch. This revolution is doomed.

The topmost thought, easiest to reach, looks like a number. It's flickering and distorted, but there's definitely a number there. And- a symbol. The mouth wants to eat the bigger number, a voice says from way in the back of his mind.

"_Less than_ ten," Haymitch says with certainty. There's more. He hunts for it, grasps it and pulls it flashing into the unbreathable, poisonous air. "Seven." He leans back and stretches out his legs, crossing his ankles, savoring the feeling of satisfaction while it lasts. It never stays long, these days. He smirks at Plutarch and flicks one hand at him in a contemptuous gesture. There, you condescending prick. So much for your damn secrets and your ideas of what concerns me. He'll leave this hotel room the way he always leaves meetings with the spymaster: sore and angry and wanting to run his fist through a wall. But for this one moment, he has the upper hand.

Plutarch struggles over whether to deny it or reiterate that it's none of Haymitch's business, then realizes that it's too late to do either. "How did you know that?" he asks instead, eyeing Haymitch with sharp curiosity.

Haymitch scoffs at him. "Seriously? Plutarch-" He stops, looks vaguely around the room.

"Was it just a guess?" Plutarch asks. Haymitch hadn't known, not when he'd first asked about Effie. So no one had told him. Even a drunk like him could be expected to make the deduction that there weren't many Capitolites involved in the Resistance, but to produce the exact number like that…

Haymitch laughs. Then he draws the knife from his pocket. With his free hand, he tugs on a strand of his hair. "This isn't fur. It isn't a mane. Damn you, you blind fool. Branded I might be, but these-" He strikes out a fist. Plutarch flinches but Haymitch pulls the punch, just bumping Plutarch's nose with his knuckles. "These are not _paws_. I'm as much of a man as you are."

Plutarch stands up slowly, keeping an eye on the knife. "Easy, old fellow."

Haymitch looks at the knife in his hand and then thumps it down onto the bed. "_Easy_, you pathetic craven," he spits back, his glare at least as sharp as the surrendered blade.

"You've stabbed four people to death," Plutarch says frostily. "And you're ranting like a lunatic." He points to the knife. "Hand that to me."

Haymitch rolls his eyes, sweeps up the knife and thrusts it toward Plutarch. He won't ask this soft prick for permission to keep it. It's clear enough what answer he'd get. Every time they meet, Plutarch comes out the unequivocal winner; the master, if you like. One of the masters. Waking up sore and naked with Plutarch watching over him and sipping a drink, it's undeniable that the likes of him will always win. Haymitch steps into this room already defeated, defeated dozens of times over.

"Hilt first," Plutarch demands, gloating over his victory.

Haymitch flips the knife into the air and catches the blade as it comes flashing back down end over end. It's not as smooth as he could have done it at home, showing off for the kids or the ghosts. He's too tense (too furious), and he throws it up at an angle and has to lurch half out of his seat in pursuit of it. But his hand closes on the blade, opening shallow cuts on his palm and fingers. Still smiling, he holds the knife out hilt first.

Plutarch takes it and tucks it away in his own jacket. From his inner pocket he produces the familiar silver flask. "Try to be grateful I don't report that little episode to your handler, Haymitch. If you're still capable of such rationality, that is. Now drink up."

Haymitch toasts Plutarch sarcastically and downs the potion in one go. He puts out his hand and vaguely feels Plutarch take the flask from it. Everything is already rushing away. A warm, pudgy hand touches his arm, his ribs, his leg. Haymitch tries to roll over onto his other side before the world goes dark.

"Hold still," Plutarch demands later, after Haymitch has come back to consciousness.

Haymitch shifts uncomfortably, wincing. His ass is throbbing. "I bet you'd be such a _gentle_ lover if I was awake," he bites out, wishing he could snap at the hands pulling on his ear and holding his hair back. "You wouldn't have the balls to be this rough if I wasn't safely knocked out."

Plutarch narrows his eyes. He presses the mite carefully against the skin behind Haymitch's ear. "Stop squirming, unless you want this in you instead of on you."

Haymitch makes himself hold still, fists clenching. If there's blood, he'll have to take a damn bath. Balthamos will _probably_ let him alone during that, but there'll be another humiliating examination afterward.

"I paddled you," Plutarch informs him off-handedly, pressing the border of the tiny flesh-colored plaster down around the mite. "With the hand mirror on the nightstand. I won't do it while you're awake for the same reason I won't take you while you're awake. You need to be able to interact with me as your superior officer, for the benefit of the Resistance. For now, that has to take precedence over what could only be a beneficial experience for you."

Haymitch sits frozen beneath Plutarch's hands. "You _spanked_ me?"

"Yes, I did." He can hear the smile in that voice.

Haymitch shrugs, mutters a lame, "Whatever." Some man you are, sweetheart.

Plutarch stands and steps away to get himself a drink. Haymitch lies back down, thinking apathetically that he might as well try to sleep until his cuff chimes and it's time to leave. Whatever whatever whatever.


	58. Absent Friends

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, Col1999!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 58**

Victors Memorial Park is a sprawling green oasis growing out of the eastern edge of the Capitol. It pushes into the dead space between the great city and District 1. Haymitch supposes it will one day reach the border and have to start growing sideways, snaking its way around the Capitol until all the happy, shiny people are living in the middle of a ring of their dead pets and playthings. He doubts this will encroach upon their peace of mind in the slightest. After all, this isn't a graveyard in any proper sense of the word. What it is, is a damn botanical garden littered with statues and occasionally sprinkled with the ashes of the latest dead Victor.

He sits on the bench and looks up at the statue of Chaff, which is a bad joke and just in incredibly poor taste. Statue Chaff stands on a square pedestal with a shiny brass plaque that reads simply: Chaff, Victor of the 40th Hunger Games, District 11. No last name, no birth and death dates. It gets worse. The effigy is of a kid (fifteen, Haymitch supplies automatically) and bears no resemblance at all to the man Haymitch had counted his best friend for the last twenty-five years. One marble hand grips a short metal spike that looks as though it was probably a makeshift knife. The expression is one of bland dreaminess.

His car will be here in half an hour. If the peacock is going to show up, he had better make it soon. Time and tide and horny Capitolites wait for no Districtor.

Twenty months now he's been a whore, and time has brought him considerable privileges. Little effort is made to keep track of him anymore. He gets the List when he arrives at the Cell each month: time and date of appointments, male or female, any special instructions. That last column is usually empty. He keeps waiting for something really barking mad to show up there, but so far it's all been on the level of clients wanting him to wear a certain fabric or color. He'd have thought they'd have more imagination.

He's left to his own devices whenever he isn't working. They even allow him to bathe and dress himself. He just has to inform them a day ahead of time if he'll be out of the Cell in the hour prior to an appointment, and where his driver can pick him up.

Best of all is after it's all done and over for another night. His driver takes him back to the Cell, and he's _alone_. Balthamos isn't there to fuck with him or rape him or torture him. He can drink as much as he wants for the rest of the night.

Sometimes he breaks things- throws lamps, upends furniture, runs his fist through the stupid silk-covered walls. He doesn't do that often anymore, really tries not to. Doing that brings Balthamos back. But sometimes he just has to.

Getting up, he walks a slow circle around the statue. His feet scuff at the ground as he searches for what he wants. He's still a bit clumsy, too clumsy for this really. In 12 he walks on the sides of his feet, and that's easier. In the Capitol he walks more or less normally and conditions himself not to wince every time his weight shifts onto his toes. Show dogs don't hobble. These days, in the Capitol, he barely limps.

He walked here, and his feet are throbbing with the sort of radiating, persistent ache that makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. He huffs, ducking his head and looking grimly into the distance. Then he goes back to scuffing at the ground.

He bends down and picks up a rock about half the size of his fist. It has a decent edge to it, and pain and impatience decide the matter. It'll do. He returns to the statue that looks nothing like Chaff and sits down on the grass in front of it. The brass is soft, and it's easier than he expected. He scratches Chaff's last name into the shiny surface in slanted, straggling letters, printing it all in capitals because he knows anything else will be illegible. After a moment's figuring, he adds birth and death years.

No flood of Capitol Guards has yet descended on him, so he begins to scratch the epithet he'd settled on. It's what he would have said at Chaff's funeral, had there been a funeral and had he been allowed to attend it. Of course, Victors don't have funerals. In the Districts, anything that resembles a funeral for a Victor is punishable with fines and the ever popular lashings. It's all part of discouraging fraternization between Victors and ordinary Districters. Fellow Victors might hold some type of memorial in the separate world of their Village, but the only one left in 11 now is Seeder…

"Why _are_ the pretty ones always so dumb?" a too-familiar voice sighs behind him.

"Bugger off," Haymitch says without turning around.

There's another lingering sigh and then Finnick drops to his knees beside Haymitch and sits cross-legged on the ground. "Is that any way to greet a friend?"

Haymitch looks away from his work long enough to give Finnick his usual slanted smile. "You want to autograph it? Here, I'll lend you my rock. That'll probably bring a few thousand more visitors."

"You know they're going to have you against the wall for this," Finnick says conversationally.

Haymitch flinches and a jagged line appears in the middle of the newly added dates. He curses in a low growl, then laughs roughly. "Idle hands, pretty boy. Defacing monuments is what I do when I'm bored and I don't have any liquor. Bet you'd think of much better things to do- if your hands were ever unoccupied for more than thirty minutes."

Finnick gives him an unimpressed look. "What are you writing, anyway?"

"Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat."

Finnick nods in grudging approval. "Fitting."

Finishing the inscription, Haymitch sits back and looks at the plaque. He sets the rock on one thigh, keeping his left hand loosely wrapped around it. "You got something to say?"

Finnick looks around with practiced casualness, an easy smile gracing his handsome features. They're still alone. "So, Hay- the second Tuesday of each month those of us who are in the city throw a rave at the Rendezvous. Loud music, all the latest designer highs. Maybe a bit of fun in the back rooms. Get you flying. Just putting it out there. I could get you an invite."

Haymitch nods and offers a non-committal, "Maybe." Outwardly he forces himself to relax. It's finally happening, then. 'Second Tuesday', that'd be ten days from now. The word 'flight' or 'flying' in any context means escape. He goes back to 12 in five days. Five days after that, he'll have to get the kids to the train station without anyone noticing. He has uniforms for the three of them hidden in the springs of one of the chairs in his den, as well as a canvas bag for the baby. He has razors and a quart of blackberry juice to camouflage his distinctive golden hair- Peeta, too, if there's time enough. Enough stuff that he'd be tortured and publicly executed if the Peacekeepers found it. The only thing stored at the kids' house is a small vial of sleep syrup, obtained months ago from Katniss's mother and stored openly in the bathroom cabinet 'to soothe colic'.

The kids don't know about the uniforms or the planted loading supervisor who will overlook the three of them and create a diversion if necessary. The less they know the safer for them. He'll have to come up with a convincing lie about the non-existent plans to make sure Prim and Elsabet are safe so Katniss will cooperate. Could he get Peeta to help with that? Could Peeta be trusted with something like that?

All of this runs through his mind in less than ten seconds as he looks unseeingly at the brass plaque and breathes slowly.

"Don't worry too much about the plaque. People expect you to do stupid things. I'm sure it won't be that bad," Finnick says with a faintly mocking smile.

"Right," Haymitch says. "My ride's here." He stands up and brushes his pants off. "Later, Finnick."

"Enjoy," Finnick calls after him. He watches Haymitch until the other man is out of sight then stretches and leisurely ambles off to tour the other statues. Mentally he plays with different things he'd write on the few he knows or knows of. Not worth the punishment, of course, but fun to think about.

*Translation: 'Every hour wounds; the last one kills.' -Seneca


	59. Nero

Note: Sorry this is a day late. Yesterday was death day, so. Next chapter will probably be up early to even it out.

Note2: This one's another M-rated chapter. If you're too young or likely to be offended, please go read something else.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 59**

The mite is currently on him, secreted behind a tiny skin-colored plaster behind his ear. Plutarch told him it won't activate until he pushes it under his target's skin. After that, of course, whoever's listening on the other end will be able to hear everything that happens in the hotel room. Probably be making a recording of it.

Ten more days, he tells himself. This doesn't matter. They all know you're a whore anyway, and in ten more days it will be over.

He understands now that there will be no place for him in whatever Resistance stronghold the kids will be taken to. He can never look these people in the eye and interact with them as an equal. He's been degraded, and it's as clear and irrevocable as the glittering roses on his hands and wrists. At best, he'd be treated with derision and contempt, called 'pet' and constantly marginalized. At worst, they'd eventually start using him just like the Capitolites have for so long. Getting the kids to the train will be his last job for the Resistance. Then, finally, it will all end.

In a hallway of the latest posh hotel, Haymitch prepares to perform his penultimate mission for his true masters.

"Nero Calais," the john introduces himself. He eyes Haymitch up and down as Haymitch steps into the room. "You're a fine big fellow, aren't you?" he says appreciatively.

Haymitch shrugs. "Compared to some," he replies, flicking his eyes insultingly over Nero. It's stupid, but he just can't help himself.

Nero's lips thin for a second. Then his expression oozes back into the contented smugness of a man surveying a newly bought hound. But at least for a second, Haymitch's words had gotten through. He tries to hold onto that as Nero reaches out and caresses the side of his face, asserting his control. "Yes, you're a handsome boy. Can you top?"

Bite, a voice in his head urges. They make a dog of you, so show them your teeth. Go ahead. Bite his damn fingers off.

It's sick, his mind is sick, not only degraded but also decaying, devolving.

"Answer me." Nero tugs lightly at his hair, a careless gesture that isn't even meant to hurt, just to get his attention.

"Yeah, I can top." He never has with a man before. But he has the booster injection, and he's pretty damn sure it would enable him to successfully fuck anyone. Attraction, inclination, and self-respect cease to matter when he gets his mind wrapped around that drug.

"Excellent. You can do me, and then maybe I'll do you," Nero says hungrily. He's not even looking at Haymitch anymore, just kind of off into the ether. How many times has he already played out this fantasy in his mind, with his hands or toys or interchangeable partners?

Just like that, Haymitch's mind latches onto an idea with a gleeful Wenceslas-esque laugh. Does Nero, his 'very close friend' for the next three hours, actually use those toys on himself? He'd assumed the purpose of all those objects was purely sadistic: increasing the pain and humiliation quotient for whatever poor bastard ended up in their bed (or on their floor, or bent over their couch, or for fuck's sake _stop_). But then, as far as he knows, he's never yet been with a man who likes to be on the receiving end. That kind of man likes a bit of pain and humiliation, Wenceslas reminds him insinuatingly. You'd know, wouldn't you, sweetheart?

"Shut up," he says. He knows Wenceslas isn't really here, but sometimes speaking aloud makes him go away for a while.

A stinging slap lands on his left cheek, and Haymitch jerks back in pure surprise.

"Apologize," Nero demands before doing something very stupid. He steps forward, closing the space Haymitch had made between them, and slaps Haymitch a second time.

Haymitch takes another step back. His shoulders and arms are so tensed that they actually hurt, and his hands are curled into fists. It's an effort to keep them at his sides. He's been punched more times than he can even remember. He's also been slashed with knives, disemboweled with a friggin' _axe_, and nearly flayed to death. They've put out their reeking cigars on him and broken his toes and beat him with a goddamn fucking cane. He's shuddering with rage now, but whether it's from the memories or from this stupid little prig's actions he can't even begin to tell. They're too intertwined. They're part of each other, part of all of it. Being slapped should be nothing, just _nothing_. But, see, no one's _slapped_ him before…

"Stop it," he warns Nero, surprised that he can still warn him.

"You audacious pup!" Nero slaps him a third time and somehow he's back against the wall now. Everything's slowed down, stretched and misshapen. The air feels thick and soupy. Nero's words pull out like taffy, and it takes Haymitch long seconds to make sense of them. "Get down on your knees this instant, or I'll tell your handler how bad you've been."

Men don't slap other men, do they? They slap dogs that are misbehaving but are too tame to pose any threat.

It's building past his ability to control, increasing pressure in the right side of his brain, where it always starts. He can hear his heart ramming against his ribs like some predatory animal maddened by the scent of blood. Something is going to happen here.

Haymitch huffs in a deep breath; for the first time in months he's totally unaware of the deep, ever-present pain in his feet as he shifts his stance. He thinks, with the part of his brain that puts words to thoughts and is useless and impotent in these moments, that he's going to run his fist through the wall. That, or throw something. Maybe Nero.

The thought of the mite touches his mind only to drop away at once. What stays is the carnal knowledge of what it feels like, what it is like, when these soft, weak Capitolites fuck him. Why the fuck had he ever allowed it? Bigger than most of them, stronger than any of them, his part is to dominate and to kill any challengers.

He thinks of the kids not at all. He doesn't remember them at all.

He strikes out and his challenger is on the floor at once, gasping and curling up. Haymitch cocks his head and looks down at his fallen opponent, his mind a wonderful blank. He'd hit him in the gut. If the other male gets up, he'll be able to do it again. He wants that. His blood is up.

"Leave," Nero croaks breathlessly. Then he adds quickly: "_Please_. Please leave. Don't hurt me." His voice is brittle with terror.

Haymitch hunches his shoulders and chuffs in disdain. He'd warned. This one should have kept distance without even a warning, but still he'd warned.

Slowly, heavily, Haymitch turns away toward the door. There's a distant pounding in his ears, low and powerful and hypnotic. It fills up the vast spans where useless thoughts and ideas and memories had so recently dwelled. His right hand grips the doorknob and then his left hand closes into a fist and slams into the door. It's too heavy for him to break through, though it shudders in its frame. Behind him his would-be rival yelps.

Haymitch backs up a step and deals the door a kick. The pain in his toes is sudden and intense and irrelevant. Three of the malformed bones snap apart again. Haymitch puts the foot down, lets his weight onto it, panting. He turns away from the door.

At the sight of his face Nero screams high and loud and scuttles backwards on hands, feet, and ass. Haymitch's mouth is hanging slightly open. Foam bubbles from his mouth and runs down his chin. His eyes are moving slowly and repetitively back and forth, back and forth. He is breathing loudly and heavily, little grunts escaping him with each exhale. His nose wrinkles and his upper lips lifts to show his teeth.

The movement draws his attention.

"No! Stay back! Don't-"

He comes at it. He kicks Nero full in the face, putting all his weight on his freshly injured foot for a second as he does it. Nero falls full on his back, moaning and crying. Frenzied, Haymitch stomps a foot on his belly.

"Eh. Stop-" Nero coughs, much too late. Last words.

Two or three minutes later, it's over. The Capitolite is a bloody, broken corpse lying on the plush red carpet. His blood seeps into it, and Haymitch thinks- for one bare second of horrible sanity- of blood soaking through sheets into a creaking mattress. Somewhere nearby, there's the sound of raised voices and laughter.

Sometime later his cuff makes that soft chiming noise that used to mean it was over. Haymitch is sitting on the sofa in the living room of the lavish suite. He doesn't move, but the dread rises in him and he feels like throwing up. "Ah, fuck," he mutters. Still, there's nowhere to go. So he waits.

Time passes, another piece of his life comes and goes in the hotel room, and the cuff makes its noise again. Haymitch wonders how many warnings he gets. He's never tested it.

Nero is in the next room, in the bedroom, on the floor, bleeding on the floor. Bleeding through the floor. Won't that be a nice surprise for whoever's one floor down? The ceiling above the bed will slowly darken as they're plowing into someone, maybe a killer like him, punishing them and _rewarding_ them. The one below them may be looking up, especially if it's a woman. They'll see the growing darkness and maybe grin if they can. He'd outright laugh if it were him. But then, he knows whose blood it is.

Balthamos might not come in person, and if he does he won't be alone. Against the wall. Seventh floor, so he could jump.

But- the kids. Fuck. They'll have them. _Balthamos_ might have them, or one of them. Probably Katniss. The sick fucks will give Katniss to Balthamos.

Haymitch suddenly stands up and limps into the bedroom. His right foot hurts like hell, worse than it has since that night. He can barely put any weight on it. He doesn't remember doing it, but it kind of looks like he may have… well, just _stomped_ Nero to death. Big fucking blur.

"Wake up," he snaps at Nero, putting as much threat into it as he has. Nero doesn't respond except to stare up at Haymitch with his dead, glazed eyes. "You shit," Haymitch swears at him in a low voice. "You stupid, conceited prick. I'd have let you. Stupid, soft, weak, pathetic fuck you are." He slams a hand against the wall, but he doesn't make a fist and punch through it. That level of rage has passed, been exhausted on Nero.

After a few more minutes of doing nothing at all, Haymitch goes back out to the living room. At least he can sit down and do nothing out here.


	60. Last Rites

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 60**

In Snow's office, a scarlet-uniformed Avox steps up to the gleaming desk baring a small silver tray. An engraved calling card waits in the tray's center, and the President takes it up and reads the name written in old-style calligraphy. "Send him in," he commands. The Avox bows and retreats from the room.

Seconds later, one of the very few men who might presume to the title of 'friend' enters the office, closing the door behind him. Plutarch takes a seat without waiting to be asked, leaning back casually and fixing a friendly but slightly eager look on Snow. On anyone else, this expression would precede five minutes of flattery followed by a request for some (usually trifling) boon.

"Ah, Plutarch, my good friend," Snow greets him, leaning forward with a sly smile. "What manner of favor have you come seeking?"

"You wound me, Coriolanus," Plutarch says insincerely. "Am I so transparent as that?"

"Ask, if you would have it. I've a country to run," Snow says. His tone belies his impatient words. Here's why Plutarch has remained close to the throne for seven long years: you get the sense when talking to him that you're speaking with a fellow man. He's cunning enough never to overstep himself, wily enough never to grovel. Snow has found shockingly few men left in the world. Still, it won't last forever. One day Plutarch will get too bold and will have to be discarded like all those who came before him. Sometimes Snow thinks that might actually be a hard thing for him to do.

Plutarch raises a hand in acknowledgement of Snow's assertion. "Okay, okay. There is something I should very much like to have. I'd like to have Katniss on her first night." He leans forward, watching Snow with unabashed anticipation.

"Katniss? You ask much," Snows says slowly, his mind ticking over the options. "I already have five requests for Miss Everdeen's first appointment from very high-ranking people."

"Higher ranking than Head Gamemaker?" Plutarch asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Ancius Docen, for one," Snow says, naming his chief of weapons development.

"My, my. I suppose I am playing with the big boys, at that," Plutarch says easily. "Well, it was worth asking."

Snow considers for a moment, and Plutarch is smart enough to keep still. "There's Peeta, as well," he offers experimentally.

"Yes. I hear Ancius goes both ways," Plutarch says.

"And you don't?" Snow returns, amused at the man's daring.

"Peeta doesn't appeal to me. He's too pretty, and too tame," Plutarch says baldly.

Snow laughs. "I never seem to tire of you, Plutarch. If I'd known you fifteen years agon, I may have married you to my daughter. More's the pity."

"Ah well, we can't all be royals," Plutarch says. "So, can I have Katniss's first appointment?"

"She'll bring a high price," Snow warns, and Plutarch's face lights up in a triumphant smile.

"How high?" he asks.

"1700."

"Agreed," Plutarch says promptly, offering his hand across the desk. Snow hesitates just a second before clasping the hand, something dark flickering in his eyes. Plutarch affects not to notice. They shake, and it's settled.

"Out of idle curiosity, how much more could I have gotten from you?" Snow inquires.

"I would have gone as high as 2000," Plutarch tells him. "But what are three hundred marks between friends?"

9876543210

Less than twenty-four hours after killing the Capitolite, Haymitch is back in District 12. Home. Or as close to it as he'll ever get again.

They're going to execute him tomorrow morning, a gala affair that will doubtless be witnessed by the whole of District 12. TV crews will broadcast his last moments to the rest of Panem. He should probably come up with something profound to say.

They'll have Katniss and Peeta in the front row. So, maybe 'sorry'.

For tonight he has the District 12 jail all to himself. There are only three cells in here, holding tanks for miscreants awaiting a flogging or enjoying a few hours' sleep between days spent in the stocks. The cell has a toilet in one corner and a metal shelf with a foam mat on it jutting out of the opposite wall. No sink, no seat on the toilet. Very Spartan.

At least there's no withdrawal yet. His guards on the train had been surprisingly decent fellows. He'll go to the scaffold with a headache tomorrow morning, but he won't be shaking and throwing up all over himself.

"No more withdrawal, not ever," he tells himself quietly.

He's been trying to work out whether he's scared of dying or not. Because he is going to die. There's no way for him to escape, nothing the kids can do to save him. The branch won't break this time, either. If the drop doesn't sever his spine, he'll be strangled to death as he sways back and forth a few feet above the totally unreachable ground. He has less than twelve hours of life left in him.

Mostly, he just feels numb. Denial, he supposes. Other than an unknown amount of damage to his liver (and no symptoms; right up to the end the booze hadn't been able to lay him low), he's perfectly healthy. It's impossible for him to thoroughly grasp that he's seen his last sunset, ever. Hope: the weed that springs eternal.

There are no windows in this part of the Justice Building. For form's sake Haymitch rests the side of his face against one of the bars and then tries to force his head out between two of them. He's heard that if your head will fit the rest of your body will, too.

The door at the end of the passage opens. Haymitch watches with bright, curious eyes. There's a limited number of times left for even something so simple as this: to see a door open and someone come towards him, come to him, wanting something with him. Tonight, tomorrow morning… gone. A long time to be gone.

He hopes it will be one of the Peacekeepers, bringing him food or water. He isn't stupid enough to hope for a drink. Bull-stupid, scared-stupid, helpless-stupid. Whatever. He's not a little kid, and he knows he's had his last drink. He isn't really hungry, or even interested in food. The kids will be watching tomorrow. Those sick fucks will make them watch him die. Haymitch has never seen a man hung. He supposes there's a chance that when the rope snaps his spine he'll piss himself. If so, there's nothing he can do about it. But he can at least make sure he doesn't shit himself.

It won't be a Peacekeeper. That he does know, because there's still one part of this fuckery to get through before the big finale. It's time for the Betrayed to look upon the Dying.

Peeta steps into the cinder-block hallway, chin up and shoulders back. His expression is stony. He stops in front of the cell and looks at Haymitch. Haymitch watches his throat move as he swallows repeatedly. "This can't be happening."

Haymitch looks away, shrugging. What's he supposed to say to that? He somehow didn't expect the boy to be so- crushed. He'd expected him to be pissed, to be a rational human being for once. Katniss will be pissed. He'll be on steady ground with the girl.

"Don't let Katniss come here, okay?" he asks the blank cement walls.

"Sure," Peeta says with a forced laugh. "If I figure out some way to control Katniss in the next- well, _tonight_, I'll send her straight to the house and make her stay there."

"Thanks," Haymitch says, risking a glance at the boy. It's probably not going to get any better, so he gives up and turns to face him. "Don't you want to know why?"

"Because by Seam law one of you has to claim a victory every time you come in range of each other?"

"Don't you want to know why I killed him?"

Peeta shakes his head quickly. "No. He deserved it. I know that."

"Fuck's sake, boy," Haymitch growls, rolling his eyes. "It's not what you're thinking, okay? Hell, _that's_ old hat."

"Whatever happened, he deserved it."

"Forget it. Yeah, he did. They'll come for you now. You and Katniss." I'm sorry, he thinks but doesn't say. Gods, I'm so goddamn sorry. Worthless words. He'd tried. That had turned out to be pretty worthless, too.

"We won't go. They can't force us to do that."

"They'll kill your family. Your parents and your brothers."

Peeta shakes his head in mute denial. "I- I don't care!"

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "Yeah, you do. They've got you, kid." He studies Peeta through the bars. Peeta as himself, for the last time. He'll be there for tomorrow's festivities, but he'll be trying to be brave for the girl, trying to deny the cameras his reaction. Maybe even trying to be brave for Haymitch.

It's a crappy version to end on, scared/desperate Peeta, but it's really _him_, that's the point. Peeta's here, and suddenly Haymitch realizes that he's not just scared of dying- he's fucking terrified. His personal eternity is less than twelve more hours. Soon it will shrink to eleven hours, and then ten. Very soon, horribly soon, his eternity will be the feel of the rope cutting into his neck and the clawing, instinctive struggle to get the unreachable air into his lungs. And that'll be everything, literally all he will ever feel again, forever.

"They're going to kill you," Peeta says in a shocked, unhappy tone, as if to drive the point home.

Haymitch nods and maybe smiles, maybe grimaces.

Peeta meets his eyes, and Haymitch sees hope putting out feeble shoots in that cerulean gaze again. Hope is a worse addiction than alcohol, by far. Alcohol sometimes kills you and sometimes something else gets there first. Hope always prolongs your suffering.

"I'll do what you did. I'll go and tell Snow that I'll cooperate if he'll let you live and if he'll spare Katniss."

It'll never work. With neither of the kids on the List, they're the Famous Star-Crossed Lovers and proud parents of the first-ever Purebred Victor Baby (with more to follow, you can be sure: new litters coming soon, so stay tuned!). With Peeta on the List that all-important exclusivity is broken. Katniss is young and popular and beautiful. No way Snow will be interested in keeping her barefoot and pregnant while offering Peeta to his Capitolites.

"Listen to the kid," Haymitch jeers softly. "You're just aren't hot enough to save both of us, Peeta. Decent-looking, at a stretch. But…" He shakes his head in mock-regret. "Not hot."

Peeta looks nonplussed, momentarily lifted out of his desperation by the puzzle of how to respond to this bizarre assessment. "Uh, thanks, I guess."

"My fucking word," Haymitch sighs, giving the boy a 'you-idiot' look.

Peeta flushes. "I mean, it's good to know you don't think I'm, _hot_." He gives his head a frustrated shake. "Why are you trying to distract me?"

"Now if it were just Katniss you were trying to save, that would be," he can't bring himself to outright lie about it, "_closer_ to a reasonable goal."

"I won't let them kill you," Peeta says stubbornly.

"Fine, then. You'll try, you'll fail." It doesn't matter, anyway. Let Peeta try to barter himself for Haymitch and Katniss. Hell, throw in free bread for all the kids in 12. It'll come to the same. And Peeta knows it. He can see that, too, just as clear as the pestilent hope.

"It's okay, Peeta. Tomorrow won't be so bad. It won't be as bad as the last time Thread got hold of me. It'll be quicker." Lies. This time will be fucking eternity. "It'll be a hell of a lot quieter."

"I'll be there, okay, Haymitch?" Peeta promises. "The whole time. I won't look away."

"Okay."

Peeta reaches out a hand and Haymitch slips his own hand through the bars to shake it. But instead Peeta takes his hand and presses the knuckle of his thumb into Haymitch's palm.

"Wake up?" Haymitch asks, looking at their joined hands in consternation. "Kids. Nothing's ever that easy."

Peeta lets go and steps back. "I was hoping _I'd_ wake up."

9876543210

"I shouldn't have come." That's the first thing she says to him from her side of the bars.

"No, you damn well shouldn't have," he growls back at her. Neither of them wants this. He knows too well what's going to happen to her tomorrow, how they'll break her in. It swims through his mind that he should give her a last piece of advice: tell her not to struggle, to just let them get on with it. But, shit, that wouldn't do any good even if he could force those disgusting words out of his throat. Because they'd find some excuse. They'd push her until she _had_ to turn and show them her teeth.

After everything, they'll still take her. They tricked him. He'd thought he knew better, thought they could do anything to him but that. They'd never fool him again. Now, well, now just look. "So why don't you get the hell out?" He turns away from her icy regard, shoulders hunched.

"You know why," she snaps, sounding closer now. In spite of himself he half turns and looks back at her. She's against the bars, now, as though she wishes she could get through them and get at him. She looks downright feral. As he watches she presses her face between the bars, tilting her head against the steel with frustrated little twitches.

"Tried it," he says flatly.

"Smaller," is her terse reply.

Haymitch shrugs, a cynical smile curving him lips. Katniss closes her eyes, as though that will help. Or maybe she's just weary unto death of looking at that particular smile.

"Katniss-" Haymitch rolls his eyes, snorts in irritated amusement. Surreal, how normal he suddenly feels. "If you could get in, what would it help, anyway?"

"They're _not_ going to kill you," she spits, heaving her shoulder into the gap instead and sucking in her already flat belly. "You- you surly old drunk. Goddamn it! Shit!" Her voice is getting trembly in spite of her attempts to hide that under fury.

"Go on, girl. Go back out to Peeta," he tells her. He retreats to the bunk, away from her. Peeta will take care of her. Even with everything that's going to happen after he's gone, at least she'll have Peeta. She won't want him most of the time, but lucky for her the boy won't take 'fuck off' for an answer. Haymitch tries to lie down, sharply surprised by how hard it is. Lying down in from of her is like killing something. Some part of him, maybe; or maybe some harmless Other that squirms and whines as it dies.

Katniss steps back slowly, looking at him lying on his back with his face turned toward the wall. She shakes her head. "_Damn you_," she says with great emphasis.

Dead, he's dead already, she can see that now. There's nothing here to save. She sinks slowly to the floor. Abruptly she moves to the bars again and slips one slender arm through, reaching. "Me, too," she says. Isn't she as tired as he is?

Fucking hell. In spite of himself Haymitch heaves up onto one elbow and faces her again. "You, too- what?" As if he didn't already bleeding know.

"If they kill you, they kill me."

"They won't. See, this is why Peeta doesn't let you talk to me without a chaperone."

Katniss leans against the bars, relaxed and calm in her resolve. Haymitch wishes there was something left for him to feel determined about.

"You know what I mean. We both die tomorrow."

"Uh huh. And what about Rue? Does she die tomorrow, too? Because I just want to know the final body count. I'm up to fifty-nine with you."

"Weak," Katniss sighs at the cinder-block walls.

Haymitch laughs. "I thought that was pretty damn good, actually. I've effectively killed the whole field I competed against. Plus eleven. Plus you."

"Pathetically weak," she repeats. "Peeta will take care of Rue."

"Okay. What-"

"Just shut up, now."

"What about-"

"Shut up, you filthy bastard!"

"Prim," Haymitch continues grimly. "And just by the way- weak. Oh, you could have done so much better than that." Bitch.

Katniss lets out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "So this is what it feels like to know they own me- and always will."

"Yeah. You don't get used to it. It never gets bearable. But, there's _Prim_."

"There's Prim and mom and Gale and Peeta and Rue." And not Haymitch, after tonight. Not him, ever again. So, there's only her.

And then both of the kids are gone. He's alone, forevermore.

Haymitch lies back on the thin foam mattress and closes his eyes. "Effie," he whispers to the empty cell. "Effie… I…" He takes a couple of shallow breaths. "I…" But he can't, not then and sure as hell not now. He rolls over onto his side and runs his fingers restlessly over the rough gray walls and listens to his heart labor through its last little stretch and tries to savor the sensation of breathing. Without even realizing it his fingers find his throat, touching where the scars used to be and remembering the catch and sting of neat, tiny stitches. His neck, his back, his left hand, his legs: if they hadn't kept him pretty for the endless procession of johns he'd really look like a gladiator by now, or like an untamed slave. Only scar they left him is the Games one across his belly.

"I need a damn drink," he mutters, and some light in the ether around him dims in disappointment and hurt and sorrow before flitting away.


	61. Lay Your Curse

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 61**

"It's time," the Peacekeeper tells him from the corridor outside the bars.

"Morning already?" Haymitch asks gruffly. He sits up, only distantly aware of the headache that is the forerunner of withdrawal. His heart is beating hard, the old lizard brain gearing up for fight-or-flight. Only fools walk calmly to the scaffold. They're going to kill him. What sense is there in making it easy for them?

"Nine a.m.," the Peacekeeper replies. He hesitates, looks up and down the corridor. Then he lowers his voice to a whisper. "I want you to know this wasn't my idea. And- I'm sorry as hell."

"I'm not gonna haunt you," Haymitch scoffs. "I'm just _terrible_ with faces. You all look like clones in those white get-ups, anyway."

The Peacekeeper nods expressionlessly. That fits. Haymitch has never known a one of them with a sense of humor.

"Take off your shirt."

Haymitch's mouth is dry. He shakes his head. "It's to be a nude hanging, then?" he asks, still trying to be flippant. If he can sound basically alright, your typical condemned man who walks to the scaffold like he imagines cooperation might bring him some last-minute reprieve, then maybe he can catch the Peacekeeper off guard.

Speaking of denial, sweetheart…

"No. Not nude. Not-" The Peacekeeper looks away. There's disgust in his expression. "You can keep your pants."

Haymitch pulls his shirt over his head, aware that he's started to shake. There can only be one reason they'd want him bare-chested (bare-backed). Someone decided that hanging was too quick for a Victor who'd turned on one of the masters. Or maybe too quick to teach Katniss and Peeta the lesson they need to learn from this. So Thread's going to flog him to death. It will be just like last time, only without end. He got forty, before. That had almost done for him, but only because his flayed back had gotten infected. He'd been conscious when Thread had stopped. He remembers falling into the snow. He remembers his first thought, after all of that: _can't-don't-move_. After forty he'd been conscious and aware. How many will it take to kill him outright? Sixty? More than sixty? Haymitch realizes the question is unanswerable. It will just go on and on, forever.

The last the kids will see of him (and by then he won't even remember the kids, or why this is happening, or his sustaining hatred) he'll be hanging by his wrists, the white of his ribs glistening between strips of torn and hanging gristle, screaming his madness at the numbed crowds. And the last thing they'll learn from him is that it's hopeless. It's all just a cheat.

"It'll certainly make a statement, I give you that," he says to himself, momentarily forgetting that the Peacekeeper's there.

"This isn't what we used to be about," the Peacekeeper insists, as though Haymitch might want to argue the point.

"No, I guess not," Haymitch says, putting on a brave face that feels way overdone to him. I get it, man. This sucks for both of us. I don't blame you.

And if you'll swallow that horseshit, maybe you'll also give me an opening here. Just a moment of inattention, okay? Thanks-so-much.

The Peacekeeper says, "Put both your hands through the same opening and clasp your palms together."

"I can't get both my hands through there. Won't fit."

"Try," the Peacekeeper commands, and Haymitch sees this isn't going to work. There'll be no fighting once they put the cuffs on him. But refusing to put his hands out will just bring them down on him in the cell. No chance either way. So, go at it with three or four of them who have their batons out and hope he can get in a couple of good punches? Or let this one cuff him and see if he can still catch him off guard enough to hurt him? If he can get this one on the ground, he can stomp on him…

The hatred is not yet banked by pain, and the hatred decides it for him. He'll try to kill this one before reinforcements can arrive. It'll depend on how fast he can knock him down. Then he'll stomp on his face first.

Haymitch pushes his hands out between the bars, palms together. It's a tight fit. Probably most of the prisoners who come through 12's Justice Building are a bit bonier than him. That's good, too. His guard won't be used to handling someone who can fight.

Instead of the usual metal and chain cuffs the Peacekeeper produces a figure-8 of thick brown leather. He slips a strap between Haymitch's wrists and then around each, pulling the insides of his wrists firmly together. Then he begins turning a screw, tightening it.

"You've got to be put down," the Peacekeeper says in glum resignation, sounding just exactly like a man bemoaning the unavoidable loss of a formerly productive goat. "Nothing else we can do. I mean, you killed a man with your bare hands."

"And feet," Haymitch says flatly. The leather thong is biting into the scant flesh right over the bones of his wrists, and still the Peacekeeper turns and turns the lever to tighten it.

"But-" The guard finally stops and puts the lever away. Haymitch draws his hands back through the bars. With his wrists bound together like that the only way to hold his arms is folded up against his chest. "There's execution and there's…"The Peacekeeper pauses, looking at him with strange intensity. Then he says, "Haymitch."

Those familiar sounds draw the condemned man's eyes up, promise a second's escape from this. Absurdly, he thinks that this might really be the last time he ever hears his own name. Or the last time he'll be capable of understanding it.

The Peacekeeper looks down the hallway, making sure they're still alone. There's determination in the set of his jaw and nervous tension flooding the air around him. He wraps his fingers around the butt of his pistol and half draws it. "Don't give me a reason to use this."

And Haymitch is so unused to seeing decency or compassion or even pity from these people that he almost misses what's being offered here. And then he almost goes and fucks it all up by saying '_thanks_.' Well, he's not at his most stable right now. Never could think worth a damn when he was coming off the drink, anyway.

The pathetic gratitude that rises in him repulses him. And just a few moments ago he'd been thinking to fight them every goddamn step of the way, for all the good it would have done him. One final chance to prove there'd been something in him that he'd have been proud to own. He'd fight them with the last strength of his doomed body, and his last coherent thought would be one of pure hatred for them, and if curses could be laid he'd do his best to rend them apart. Not that Haymitch believes curses can be laid; not that any of it would have spared him the endless, indescribable agony or spared the kids the scars of his hideous death-by-torture. Not that it would have made any difference.

But, damn it, there's something to be said for dying as a man, especially if there's nothing else left to hope for.

Grateful, he's _grateful_, and he can't do one fucking thing about it because there isn't enough time left to put this in perspective. The sudden knowledge that he can escape being flogged to death in front of Katniss and Peeta and the whole damned District fills him completely. A shaky smile curves his lips, chasing away the stoic, closed-off mask he'd been holding onto by sheer force of will. Hell's bells, if anyone else were here he'd blow it without even opening his stupid mouth. He has a feeling that he's on the verge of laughing.

This may well be the single nicest thing anyone's ever done for him in his whole life. And he's about to just fold to the floor and sit there shaking and bellowing with laughter. A Peacekeeper! It really is a pretty damn fine joke.

"Just behave yourself and I won't have to use this," his unlikely savior says redundantly. Haymitch curls his broken toes up in his shoes and banishes the wide grin into a more appropriate smirk and sketches a clumsy salute with two fingers.

"I'll be good," he promises with just the right edge of mockery to his tone. He takes a step back so the Peacekeeper can open the cell door. "Let's roll."

The door slides open on its track. Haymitch steps out at once, trying not to think about anything. Let it end, he tells himself, and before he can go any further he braces a heel against one of the steel bars and launches himself at the Peacekeeper.

He trips. He hadn't thought of his goddamned toes. Almost a year and a half of constant pain, every step hurting him, even putting on socks and shoes making his feet ache wretchedly, and _he'd forgotten them_. For an instant as he falls he's sure this must be a nightmare.

Then the gunshot sounds, the bullet that would have gone into his diseased, alcohol-addled, demon-infested brain goes harmlessly over his head and ricochets off the stone wall and the Peacekeeper stares at him with eyes bulging out of his head, and Haymitch thinks that he must get up, he has to get back up onto his feet, he's down and the fool doesn't know he missed, ah, fuck, his feet fucking hurt _now_, and just as he manages to jolt up onto his knees the Peacekeeper's second bullet takes him in the right side of his abdomen and he collapses back to the floor, hit and bleeding and still somehow alive.

The Peacekeeper is backing away now, shaking his head in horrified dismay. He'd shot Haymitch. He'd worked himself up to doing that over a long, sleepless night, telling himself with growing conviction that he wouldn't be a party to what their mad chief had planned. But it's a hell of a risk. No one defies Thread. The man's barking mad. The day he finally keels over from a brain aneurism will be a festival day for all the Peacekeepers in District 12. But in the meantime, _no one_ defies Thread.

But he'd worked himself up to shooting Haymitch before Thread could get at him, largely by making himself believe that he could get away with 'acting in self-defense'. Haymitch was dangerous and violent, after all, a killer, vicious as a rabid dog, supposedly. He wouldn't be made an Avox for defending himself from Haymitch. And there's really nowhere they could demote him to, not from 12. Even District 10 or 11 would only be a parallel career move. Hell, he'd be almost glad to be transferred at this point. No matter how much he might want to, Thread can't flog a fellow Peacekeeper like he can a Districter. He could take a stand here, he'd told himself last night, and get off with nothing worse than a few weeks of shit duty: midnight shifts and border patrol and such. And he had to. If he wanted to call himself a man, he had to.

Well, he'd done it, sure enough. Only it's all gone to shit. Haymitch is still alive, albeit badly wounded. And he can hear the staccato of boots coming towards the jail, lots of boots, running. Running because they heard the gunshots. There are only seconds left, and a kill-shot now would obliterate his alibi. He might as well go ahead and turn the gun on himself afterwards.

"Do it," Haymitch rasps from the floor. "_Please_." He shudders, unable to even touch his side as the blood runs freely onto the gray stones. No time to think.

"This isn't what we're _about_," the Peacekeeper says again. He steps forward, three steps across the floor, crouches and drags the prisoner's head up by his blond hair. Settling his gun against the man's temple, he pulls the trigger.


	62. Bugs

_For Cray. I'm sorry._

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review, H.A.A.H.61! I would argue that when the story ends is not my decision, not in the most important sense. But I plan and really hope for it to continue for quite a while yet. I'm just about a third of the way through writing it, I think, if it goes in the general direction I'd planned on.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 62**

Outside the Justice Building the crowd waits in a circle eight and nine people deep. They wait, muttering restlessly to their neighbors. "Whatever he did, he doesn't deserve this." They wait, whispering instructions to their children. "Don't move, don't say anything, and don't let me catch you with your eyes open." They wait, scuffling their boots in the gray dirt and idly humming one of the Miners' Songs that had called them up from the pits less than an hour ago. A few of them wait sniffling quietly into handkerchiefs, while a roughly like number wait with granite-hard righteousness in their eyes. "How many of our kids died while he just got drunk?" Near the edge, where she won't have to see, Prim waits holding onto Elsabet's hand. "Mom, can't we-" "No. Show some sense." They wait, mostly in silence.

Inside the jail, four white-clad Peacekeepers almost form their own circle around the two bodies on the floor. And here the silence prevails, stretching horribly on. Gradually, three sets of eyes move from the bodies to the rigid figure of their chief. Thread is leaning forward, almost looming over the fallen. He continually clenches and unclenches his left fist. His right hand grips his gun, pointed at the floor for the moment. A redness has risen in his face and the wholly unsettling sound of him grinding his teeth is clearly audible in the hush.

He doesn't speak until the nervous tension in the room has reached its zenith. He makes himself wait. Inhaling the fear in the still air around him, Thread breathes out: "Who shot Danby?"

"Sir, I did. Before he could kill the prisoner," Hadley hastens to explain. "I-"

"Shut up." Thread raises his left hand. "Good work, Hadley. You just became my second. Conran, you're demoted. Effective immediately." Thread takes a steadying breath and holsters his gun before he loses control and puts another round into the sorry son of a bitch at his feet. The fucker's dead already. Thread wishes he wasn't. But wishing is a weak man's pastime.

"Thank you, sir!" Hadley declares in a rush, her whole form slumping in relief. "I'm honored."

Pulling his gun again, Thread wheels toward her. "Shut the fuck up!" His face is contorted in sudden rage. "We have a goddamn situation here, men. One of you shot the goddamn prisoner in the gut! One of you proved to be a goddamn bleeding heart, lily-livered, little girl in a uniform! Haymitch Abernathy is under sentence of death by flogging. How the fuck am I going to do that now?" He looks at each of them in turn. Some of them are just about _trembling_, but they all know enough to meet his eyes. Thread slowly holsters his gun again. Reinforcements, he thinks furiously. Replace the whole damn lot of them with brand new recruits that he can train properly.

"Okay. New plan. Rufus, tell the crowd control squad to hold the Districters. No one leaves, for any reason. And then find me a cage big enough to take the prisoner. Conran, you get to drag Danby into the cell. We'll get rid of the body after curfew. Then, bring honey."

"Honey, sir?" Conran asks tentatively, but Thread doesn't look up.

"You heard me. Go. You stay here, Hadley."

The others file out as Hadley tries to convince herself that she came out ahead in this situation. A promotion is a promotion. She's now next in line to be 12's chief; and how much longer can someone like Thread possibly last? The best chiefs often get teaching positions at the institute after nine years of service, if they want them. Hadley clasps her hands behind her back to guard against the possibility of fidgeting.

Thread kneels by Haymitch, planning this out. The big question now is how long Haymitch can be expected to last. And in that they've had one decent piece of luck: Hadley's bullet killed Danby instantly, before he could finish what he'd started. Instead of going into Haymitch's skull, the shot had scored the bridge of his nose and the left side of his face. The wound in his belly will be the limiting factor. The honey will help with that.

"Got a riddle for you, Hadley," Thread says, an unbalanced smile curling his lips.

"Yes, sir?"

"How many shots does it take a Peacekeeper to kill an unarmed, restrained, disabled prisoner at point blank range?"

Hadley shifts uncomfortably, glancing toward the cell that now holds Danby's body. "Depends on-"

"_Any_ Peacekeeper," Thread says, talking over her. His voice is rising again, getting louder with each word. "Any goddamn fucking Peacekeeper! _How many_?"

"I- I don't know, sir."

"You don't know." Thread touches the fresh wound on Haymitch's face, presses his fingers into it. Haymitch shivers, struggling back up into consciousness. _Wasps. Wasps in my head_. He half rolls over, ending up on his back. Thread digs his fingers under the skin, pulling the wound open. From a few feet away, Hadley watches transfixed. Haymitch's whine morphs into a growl; his eyes come slowly open. He draws away from Thread and then sits up. His movements are strangely boneless, as though his body is controlled by invisible strings.

"Come here, Hadley," Thread invites, beckoning her forward with a wave of his blood-covered hand. "Hunker down." Reluctantly, Hadley crouches beside him. Bright and fully aware gray eyes land on her. It's bizarre, but she can _smell_ his hatred, a scent like burning wires. It makes her wrinkle her nose without thinking and huff her breath out. Haymitch leans his left side against the bars, his nose and mouth and chin crimson-muzzled.

"Maybe he knows," Thread suggests, his own eyes never wavering from Haymitch. "Maybe you'd better ask him."

"One, sir," Hadley says belatedly, just trying to recover the situation.

"This is one fuck of a long execution," Haymitch says suddenly.

Hadley jumps a little, startled. She'd been focusing on Thread, trying to appease him before she became forever known as the Peacekeeper Who Was Second-in-Command For About Twenty Minutes. Both of them notice, of course. Thread flashes her a contemptuous sneer that is gone almost before she can register the expression. Haymitch simply dismisses her, switching those sharp gray eyes and that acrid hatred all to Thread. Hadley finds herself wanting dearly to request a transfer out of 12 and shoot Haymitch on the spot. Those really seem like the only things she can do.

"When did these things become so… multi-staged? And what method are we trying next? Maybe you'd better call in someone from the Capitol to do these things for you," Haymitch taunts.

His wrists are held up in front of him, forced up by the leather bindings. He brings them to his mouth, confirming what he already knew: there's no slack in them at all. He can't even get an edge between his teeth. Not that Thread would have let him do that anyway. He had to try. At this point all the wild, hopeless schemes have to be tried. Doing anything else would be the same as walking docilely out to the whipping post. Speaking of that…

Leaning sharply against the bars, he drags his feet under him one at a time. On a scale of one to ten, it hurts a _bitch_. Can't even grab the bars. His side is pulsing, like his heart has slid down to the tiny escape hatch the bullet opened in him and is pressing against it. The blood is running out of him more quickly, now. His head is pounding sickly with the (lack-of-alcohol/loss-of-blood/just-been-fucking-shot-twice/still-about-to-die) general _stress_ of this final shitty hour. No, not standing up. Not without help, anyway. Fine. Fine, then. He'll fucking _bite_ them, if that's the only thing he has left.

He should have _bitten_ a hell of a long time before this. If this was where it was all leading to anyway-

"Lie down," Thread commands.

"Says the only chief Peacekeeper in Panem who can't manage a simple execution," Haymitch scoffs, using the roughness that pain always imparts to his voice. Soon it will be a garbled growl and he'll have to really enunciate if he wants anyone to understand his words. It'll still be a hell of a lot better than the high quavering shit some poor bastards get stuck with when they're in pain.

"Put him down, Hadley," Thread says with an indifferent shrug.

Hadley moves in. Standing over the prisoner to gain leverage, she grips the back of his neck and shoves him down flat on the floor. And there's just nothing. She doesn't know what she expected. He's gut-shot and restrained so that he can barely move his arms. He's finished. She crouches beside him, her hand never leaving his neck, holding him down with one hand as Thread grins.

"There. We can't have you bleeding to death, Haymitch. You're the star of the masquerade. So until Conran gets back here with our supplies, you can just lie there and enjoy the lull."

Hadley runs her fingertips back and forth along the sides of Haymitch's neck. "What are we going to do with him, sir?"

"Have you ever heard of scaphism?"

"No, sir." Her fingers roam back and forth, her palm laying heavy over his spine. Even as Haymitch awaits Thread's reply and thinks that it sounds like a skin disease, he gets a sharp image in his mind: a man with some kind of long-barreled gun leaning over his shoulder, standing on one foot so that he can rest the other foot on the back of a freshly killed bear.

The implications draw an audible growl from his throat and force his body upward maybe two inches in a weak heave that the woman easily subdues. The hand on his neck tightens for a moment before the fingers start moving again. The image flashes back with renewed clarity.

"We're going to feed him to the bugs. If we put him on the post now, he won't last fifteen lashes. He'll just bleed out. But Danby's given him the perfect preparation for this. We're going to smear some honey around those wounds, and in them. And then we'll dump a few buckets of insects on him. Just one to start with. Let those get started, and in a few hours we'll add some more, and then some more. Give it twenty-four hours, and his body will fill up with insects. Maggots, ants, beetles, roaches, all those things that like to lay eggs in hot, wet places and will eat anything. He's going to die like the animal he is, and he's going to do it in a cage in the Square where the rest of the herd can see every minute of it. It'll take days. The record is nineteen days, but _that_ sorry son of a bitch wasn't shot." A new idea occurs to him, and Thread snaps his fingers. Hadley looks at him warily. "Maybe we'll have a betting pool on how long he'll last. Force them all to buy in. Haymitch is used to performing, after all. It'd be a shame if his audience lost interest before the end, this being his swan song."

"Won't work," Haymitch interjects from the floor. He twists his body under Hadley's hand. "Let up a little, honey. You won the fight, okay? Take a victory lap or something."

Hadley affects not to have heard. She killed Danby, anyway. She's done something concrete to improve the squad. And she made second. And where the hell are Rufus and Conran?

"Why won't it work?" Thread asks curiously.

"Too little blood. You ought to know that. You're over-thinking it, getting all fancy. Or maybe you're just over-excited, I don't know. Point is, too little blood." Haymitch pauses, taking a slow breath and licking his dry lips. Fifteen sounds good, sounds alright. He could handle fifteen. Bleeding to death, that sounds even better. The fear surrounds him, vast and deep. He feels something like a man lying in an inflatable raft in the middle of a nighttime ocean, listening to the air leak slowly out. "It's too clean and too quiet. Bugs are ooky, especially if the audience is going to be comprised entirely of teenage girls; but they're _tiny_, see? No one's going to be able to appreciate the finer points of what's going on. From ten feet away, it's going to be no more striking than watching a man starve to death. And, believe me, that's just not gonna shock _anyone_ around here."

Thread nods, faux-seriously. "What do you think we should do?"

"Hell if I know, Thread. I'd say you've already screwed this thing sideways," Haymitch replies, matching Thread's tone so perfectly that Hadley snorts laughter in spite of herself.

Before Thread can reply, footsteps on the stairs herald Conran's return.

"Sir, they're setting up the cage on the platform in front of the stocks."

"Good. If anyone needs to be put in those in the next few days, maybe they'll piss on him. Have you got something else for me?"

"Yes, sir." Conran holds out a cloth bag that clinks with the sound of glass jars. "Three quarts of honey. It was all the shopkeeper had on hand."

This is actually going to happen. _Will_ the kids be able to see any detail from where they'll be forced to stand? He can make himself bleed out, probably, if he struggles hard enough. Except he can feel that the bleeding has slowed a lot now that he's lying down. A familiar snippet of insanity floats to the surface of his mind, something that first showed up ten years ago or more, in the fuzzy, blurred aftermath of a blackout. It's become almost a regular part of the mental scenery over the last year and a half. Haymitch goes ahead and says it aloud like he always does, just to make sure it still _sounds_ crazy.

"I may be immortal."

Hadley laughs snidely. "And this is him sober," she remarks, directing the jibe to Conran.

Thread draws a jar of honey from the bag. "Let's get him out in the cage."


	63. Run With Me

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the follow, justslightlyobssessed!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 63**

Katniss hefts the piece of clinker in her hand and stares impatiently at the closed doors of the Justice Building. There aren't any rocks where she's standing. The clinker is maybe half the size of her fist and jagged edged. She guesses she's fifteen or twenty feet from the whipping post, standing right behind the braided rope barrier. Of course, if they're wearing helmets this won't work. But she's pretty sure Thread won't be wearing a helmet. He won't want anything to interfere with his view of this.

Beside her Peeta thrums like the wires of the border fence at full charge. She can hear his heart pounding almost as clearly as she hears his breathing. She wouldn't mind so much if he'd just be still. As though to spite her, he says for the third time: "They can't do that. They can't. They'll hang him. They can't…"

"Talk sense," Katniss snaps at him, sounding eerily like her mother in this moment.

The rope barriers are positioned in a forty foot square around the whipping post, and it's very clear that Thread _will_. It's just as clear to Katniss that a piece of clinker won't stop this. Even if she sends it hurtling dead into Thread's eye, it won't. And they'll see her the second she draws her arm back to throw. And she's never even thrown a rock at anyone before. So, standing here next to the unexploded bomb precariously cushioned by layers of denial that currently constitutes Peeta, she isn't certain of what she means when she thinks of this 'working'. Maybe after she throws her missile the crowds will rush forward like they did in District Eight (To save Haymitch? To support her?). Or maybe she will. She has no weapons, but if she gets close enough she'll hook his eyes right out of his head.

She also isn't sure what Peeta's going to do when denial becomes an untenable position. All that energy. Will you run with me, Peeta? Or will you drop to your knees and scream?

Peeta seizes her hand and Katniss yanks it from him angrily. "Don't touch me!" she hisses. "Not here." The cameras are no doubt already trained on them.

"_Will they_?" he asks her. He looks from her to the post and back again.

"Yes. They will," she answers, searching him with her gaze. She tilts her head toward the doors, flicks her eyes toward them. "Run with me, okay? When the time comes."

"Run where?" he asks.

Katniss turns away from him without replying. Peeta takes in the clinker only half concealed in her closed fist and follows her eyes to the Justice Building and its still-closed doors. Unless a miracle happens, he's going to lose them both: Haymitch and Katniss. Katniss is gearing up for a redo of that day in the woods. She'll fly at them when they appear, and… will they shoot her? Arrest her? She won't be allowed to attack the Peacekeepers in front of five hundred citizens of 12, and on live TV, and walk away from it. Such an act will demand a public reprisal. So- they'll either shoot her on the spot or arrest her and flog her later, after they finish with Haymitch.

It's in his power- maybe- to turn it into that other day, that day in the square. Maybe for one of the few times since this whole thing began he's the one who could change everything that follows. He could hold her back and keep her safe. It's what Haymitch would demand that he do. But back then she'd quieted and stopped struggling because Haymitch would survive; neither of them had considered for even a second at the start of it that he might not. So Thread had made his threat and she had hushed at once. As she'd shuddered against his chest he'd felt the shame rising in her at how fast he'd subdued her.

In the fleeting seconds he has to think this through, Peeta can feel part of his mind insisting that the same thing must happen again. Haymitch will survive. They'll stop before he dies. They have to. They can't actually flog a man to death, especially not someone as tough as Haymitch. So if he can just keep Katniss safe, they'll be okay.

_Sure, all of us will be what Peeta calls 'okay'_, a familiar voice sneers in his mind.

Haymitch is going to die today, right here in front of them, almost within reach. He'll die on his knees with his wrists cuffed to that post. And if Peeta doesn't _do something_, for fuck's sake, Katniss is going to die, too.

If she won't stop fighting, if she's determined to get free, how long can he hold her? And if he can keep her from attacking them while they're killing Haymitch, will she ever suffer him to come near her again?

It's a no-win scenario, then. Whether he saves her or not, this is the end of everything he's fought for. The end of Haymitch, the end of any hope of keeping Katniss safe, and the end of _them_.

"Do you love me?" he asks her under the murmur of the crowd-animal.

It gets her attention. She actually looks at him. Her beautiful gray eyes are very wide. Loose strands of her dark hair fly hither and yon in a breeze that exists only around her. She looks fierce, wild, effulgent. She looks like the hero whose picture was removed from all the history books three quarters of a century ago.

"I did today. I will at the end, I think. Right now, I don't. I only hate _them_." She looks away again, her fist clenching around the only weapon she has left. "I'm sorry."

"I love you. Always," he tells the back of her head, knowing that even if she heard him the words didn't make any impression. He'll run with her, when the time comes. Devil take them both.

The doors of the Justice Building swing outwards. Thread steps out first, scanning the assembled crowd in scornful disregard of the sudden brightness. He strides towards the platform with the measured steps of any despot walking a gauntlet of the cowed and the awed. In his peripheral vision he catches the ones in front looking down as he passes to guard against accidentally catching his eye. No brats up front, not even any teenaged ones as far as he can tell. He wonders if there aren't any brats here today or if they're being kept to the back, being _shielded_ from him. The latter idea pleases him enough to prompt what he thinks of as a benevolent smile from him.

Holding tightly to his upper arm, Hadley begins to pull Haymitch towards the open doors and everything that lies beyond. Haymitch tries to get his feet under himself. It's a pretty damn poor show.

"Slow down, damn it," he growls uselessly at her. The pain in his side is fire-bright and splashing up over his ribs and down over his hip with each abrupt tug forward. And never mind falling, he's definitely going to fall and there isn't shit he can do about it so far as he can see. He'd just really like to get through this without spilling his guts while the damn cameras zoom in. The only thing he can see is the packed dirt and the queasy back and forth of his feet and hers. There's nothing still or stable to focus on.

For a wonder, Hadley actually stops. Her grip tightens even more, her nails digging into his biceps.

"Careful there, darlin'. Capitolites won't like it if you leave bruises," he taunts, calling up the old ironic smile for her and for every goddamn one of them. Finally, he gets his feet planted steady enough that he just might not end up eating dirt and being dragged over this last stretch of ground. Alright. Alright, then. He swallows twice, then twice more. Might as well get on with it, before she can repent of her uncharacteristic decency and start dragging him again. He's already stood here as long as will be allowed.

He takes a tentative step forward, toward the dais and the glinting fire of the cage. It's… it's not that bad. He can walk, anyway. That's more than he expected. He's- hell, he's wobbly. Can't fight her, not with his bound hands and definitely not with his feet. It's walk or be dragged like a trussed up animal. He shrugs, tries to summon up something resembling calm resignation. Fighting would only have upset the kids, anyway.

He takes another step and Hadley yanks him back hard. Haymitch ends up on his ass on the ground beside her, gasping. Would've done an all-out nose-dive if she hadn't kept hold of his arm. As it was he sort of collapsed to his knees and then just sat down. Bet she wishes she'd thought to let go, he thinks as the rage slowly creeps into him.

"_Seriously_?" he gets out when he can speak again. She looks down at him saying nothing, waiting for him to hang his head and struggle back up. Damn good joke. _Fuck_ not upsetting the kids. "Right, then, you sadistic bitch."

He lurches down and to the side, dragging her to the ground with him as she tries to hold on. He's on top of her the second she's down, digging one knee into her midriff and agilely pinning her right forearm with the other. "Down, Hadley," he breathes into her pain-gray face. They'll pull him off of her any second now; he's surprised they haven't already. He lets up a little on her arm and then brings his knee down again as hard as he can, hoping to break it before she can grab her gun. No such luck; all it gets him is a quickly bitten-off cry. If he had even one hand free he could snap her wrist and be done with it. With a snarl of unadulterated frustration, he slams his knee down again. He guesses he just isn't heavy enough to snap it that way. He can hold her down until they pull him off, and that's about it. Stalemate. Why the fuck did he bother? What had he thought this would do?

A thunderclap of pain hits his right side, and he thinks that they've finally come to Hadley's rescue. Then he realizes they haven't, god knows what's going on, but it's still just the two of them. Hadley's got her baton and is trying to beat him off her like you would a vicious dog. And that's so fucking apt you gotta love it, becomes there's only one move left for him to make before check becomes mate.

Fleetingly he wishes that metaphor hadn't sprung to his mind. He wishes the kids weren't watching.

Hadley's baton slams into his shoulder. She's starting to grasp that, for whatever reason, she's on her own here. Next she'll do her best to crack his skull open.

Haymitch braces his bound wrists on her shoulder and sinks his teeth into her throat.

Hadley begins to scream. Only it's really more of a high-pitched, piercing yawp. She hammers at her attacker, but her blows are wild and random. Haymitch can feel her throat vibrate between his teeth as he bites down harder, tearing at her. He can tell now that he's going to kill her. He can tell it from the spasmodic flurry of her strikes against his ribs and the muffled gurgling in her voice as she tries to scream for help. The blood is nearly choking him, hot and coppery and awful. Some of it slips down his throat and he raises his head long enough to throw up, a bright scarlet puddle on the ground with no solids in it at all.

Here's the lesson, and he just hopes the other Peacekeepers are getting a good long look: Thread is standing back and letting him do this. Thread is probably _getting off_ on this.

And Haymitch wants to stop; this is horrible, this is the ultimate devolution.

Kill her or let her go, they'll still kill him. They'll still make his death as much of a spectacle as they can. He has nothing to lose… and nothing to gain?

Bullshit. He'll take one of them with him. Two, if he counts Danby. They'll pay, and they'll pay while he's still around to savor it. If everyone they came after did their level best to take one or two down with them, this benighted district would come nearer freedom than it ever has before. That, or be razed to the ground.

He spits blood and bites into the raw redness of her throat again. This time gaudy arterial blood shoots up into his eyes and on past his head, pattering down on his bare back like rain. He rolls off of her. Unable to sit up with his hands bound like this, he lies on the ground and watches her twitching movement taper off.


	64. Not So Much A Plan

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 64**

Thread doesn't even realize what's happening to his erstwhile Second, not until she's a good ways toward dead. He sees that Haymitch has somehow gotten her on the ground, which he probably should have expected considering what he's seen so far from the men under his command. Should have set two of the larger males to drag the lamed, restrained, gut-shot prisoner the forty-five feet or so to the dais, he has time to think disgustedly in the sudden chaos. Still, Haymitch can't do the worthless woman much harm, and he suddenly has much bigger matters to attend to.

Thread is about three quarters of the way to the cage when the rock hits his shoulder. It bounces harmlessly off his uniform and skips on the ground at his feet. It startles him for a second. That's all. It just goes to show that the world is mostly filled with fools looking for a chance to show you how smart they are.

Thread stops, raising a hand to halt Hadley. He bends to retrieve the rock. There's a warning shout behind him and Thread rises and spins toward it in time for Katniss to slam into his chest instead of landing on his back. He stumbles back a few feet trying to grab her and keep his balance at the same time. Katniss is clawing at him, but only his face is unprotected by his uniform and he dodges her swipes with snakelike reflexes. He gets his arms around her once, but she tears free and backpedals like she has belatedly thought better of it. Thread grins ferociously and closes with the girl before she can turn to run.

Katniss doesn't even start to turn. She grabs him about the shoulders and pistons her knee up between his legs.

Katniss winces her eyes shut and whispers a strangled curse at the blow to her knee. Thread laughs down at her, gripping her arms tightly. "Oh, my _dear_!" he says with high good humor. "You're in _such_ trouble. Almost as much as-"

Peeta doesn't run with Katniss. As soon as she leaps at Thread, Peeta begins to walk toward the Head Peacekeeper from the other side, watching him narrowly. If Thread turns again and sees him, Peeta will charge. But as he watches Thread grapple with Katniss, watches with tunnel vision he isn't consciously aware of, he knows Thread won't see him. He's too dim, all dusty browns and grays, a quiet and unimportant figure who has spent seventeen years perfecting his camouflage. He doesn't shine like all the fireflies in the Meadow on a clear summer night. That's always been Katniss.

One Peacekeeper, Salm, does see him and tries to warn the chief. He's standing near the foot of the stairs leading up to the platform, one of the crowd control squad. Katniss might've been heartened by what happens to Salm in the three seconds directly after he sees Peeta, had she noticed it. A woman with gray hair and only a single arm sticking out of an unadorned black dress reaches over the rope barrier, pulls Salm's baton free of its loop with a practiced twitch, and clubs him smartly between the eyes as he turns to face her. Ripper is lost to sight before Salm hits the ground, half weaving back through the crowd and half pulled into its anonymous center.

No one else tries to warn Thread about the second Victor closing in on him. Maybe they think Peeta's coming to try to pull Katniss away, and to beg quarter on her behalf. Maybe they really don't notice him. Or, maybe, they have their own reasons for keeping quiet or looking in any other direction while the young man draws nearer to Thread.

Peeta takes in the way Thread's fingers are digging into Katniss's arms and loops one of his arms around Thread's throat from behind. Wordlessly, he begins to throttle him. Thread lets Katniss loose and clasps the back of Peeta's neck. With a grunt of effort he bends at the waist and rolls forward, throwing his attacker over his shoulders and to the ground before landing on top of him.

Katniss lands on his back and jabs a finger into his left eye. Thread roars, knees Peeta in the groin (no body armor on _him_), and turns his full attention on the girl. She's clinging onto his back with arms and legs and he leans forward and begins to punch her. His fist connects ringingly with her skull three times in quick succession. She moans, but her grip doesn't slacken. Then she closes sharp teeth on his ear and jerks her head back, trying to tear it off.

"_Damn it_! You miserable brat, let go!" Thread commands in a fiercely controlled voice. "You're making it so much worse for yourself." Katniss shakes her head like a terrier with a snake in its jaws. Then she lets go and tries to get at his eyes again.

Peeta is staggering to his feet, his face still screwed up in pain. He weaves like a punch-drunk fighter, but he fixes his gaze on Thread and comes at him again.

Thread catches Katniss's wrist before she can finish the job she started on his burning and watering left eye. But with her behind him, all he can do is hold onto it. Peeta lowers his head and charges Thread like a bull.

Katniss suddenly finds herself on her back on the ground with Thread's weight crushing down on top of her. She wriggles out from under and crouches panting beside him while Peeta holds him down.

Katniss jabs her thumb threateningly at Thread's reddened eye. "You tell them to let him go," she hisses, "or I'll blind you right now." She's running on instinct, adrenalin, and desperation. This has to work. This is all she can do. Somehow, it _has to work_.

Thread flinches away from her, unable to stop the movement. The little bitch could actually do it. It's the first time such a thing so much as crosses his mind. She could takes his _eyes_, and no matter how much he made her and her dog-loyal follower and their pet drunk suffer for it afterwards he'd still be _blind_. Something ancient and reptilian stirs in his mind and opens its own yellow eyes.

"Okay," the reptile says in its dry, rustling voice. "Okay, I'll-"

In that moment the other Peacekeepers finally rush forward. One of them grabs Peeta and locks his arms behind his back before he can even think to turn and drags him to his feet. Katniss shrieks in rage as she's pulled away from her foe. She writhes and twists, but there are too many of them. "Cuff her!" one of them barks, and her arms are hauled painfully behind her back.

Thread scrambles to his feet with undignified haste, his hauteur momentarily banished. It's on the tip of his tongue to order them to free her, but he catches himself. He could take her if the boy wasn't allowed to interfere, could have easily put both of them on the ground if he'd used his baton. But he shouldn't have needed his baton against a teenage girl and a weakling boy who got through the Games solely by playing to Capitolite sentimentality. Drawing a weapon against such weak opponents would have been shameful and cowardly. How the _hell_ did they beat him?

"You're going to regret that," he promises the girl, ignoring Peeta completely.

"Big talk," she taunts him a little breathlessly. "You feeling brave, now that you've got a dozen henchmen to protect you from me?"

"Bring them to the dais," Thread says thickly, turning to beckon Hadley and the prisoner forward again.

Oh, what the fuck is this, now? Hadley's still on the ground. Only the situation has deteriorated since he last checked on her. Now she's lying there in an expanding pool of blood, ominously still as she regards the cloud-strewn sky. Thread glances up for just a second, noting that at least it's a suitable vista to die looking at. Storm coming.

Haymitch is lying a few feet away from her. He's rolled onto his belly and propped himself up on his elbows and bound wrists. He has blood all over his face, streaked through his hair, and splattered over his shoulders.

Thread strides toward them, pauses several feet away, and abruptly commands, "Stay down, Haymitch." Knowing at once how stupid it sounds, how cowardly. Those goddamned brats will _pay_.

"Aye aye, chief," Haymitch says insolently, and quite loudly enough to carry to the watching crowd.

Thread stalks up to Hadley in an unconscious speeded-up parody of his earlier haughty stride. Hunkering down beside her, he considers her glazed eyes and her torn open throat. Taking up her wrist he searches briefly for a pulse, knowing that even if by some miracle he finds one she's beyond salvaging. Going to have to just call this one a total loss. There's nothing; he drops her hand carelessly back to the dust and stands as he brushes his hands off on his pants. They remain largely coated with dried blood.

Leaving Hadley's corpse where it fell Thread resumes his march to the dais. Behind him some of the others move to collect the prisoner.


	65. What We're Capable Of

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 65**

Rough hands drag him back up onto his feet. The world is one big vertigo blur now, but when they start moving forward his feet move automatically and he walks with them on either side of him. His stomach is roiling, his head is hanging, but he walks. They don't hurry him now, and unwillingly he's grateful for that. This can't last much longer. He gave the last of his energy to killing the woman, the one who'd once held him down and imagined him a vanquished beast and herself some mighty hunter. Her name had sounded something like his own, but he doesn't have the will to look for it. Doesn't matter. Just a few more minutes.

"Step up," a curt voice commands. They've reached the stairs leading up to the central dais. Here it is, then. Cooperate, fight, or do the passive resistance thing and be dragged the last few feet like a whipped dog on a leash? The kids are watching. They're here somewhere, probably right up front. They saw what he did to the woman. They'll see whatever he does now.

"_Move_."

Haymitch takes a step up towards the cage, very much aware of the hands wrapped around his arms. If they let go he'll fall. No question. The walk to the stairs was all reflex and muscle memory, and without the support of the guards he'll fall. He takes another step in response to an impatient twitch at his left arm, not quite a jerk. "So eager," he drawls, cutting his eyes at Lefty. "Take a couple of deep breaths. Savor it. You'll want to be able to remember the details tonight."

"Shut up, killer," the guard on his right snaps as they all move up another step together, arm in arm as it were. Haymitch grins tauntingly. He's thinking that they should probably do the rest of this in silence. That right there would be a beautifully fitting line for him to go out on. Humorless cretins have been telling him to shut up since way before any of this started, since he was just a kid getting pummeled for saying something smart. And 'killer' is probably the closest a jumped-up Capitol guard-dog like this can come to naming him. Look at that. Just about a perfect final letter from this shitty world.

Alert and clear and brilliantly alive, Haymitch retorts, "I get it. You boys are too excited to wait a _second_ longer." Hell if he'll let them have the last word.

Then they're at the top of the stairs, so he guesses he cooperated with them after all. He arranges his features into an indifferent expression, wondering how that looks through the mask of drying blood. Giving the cameras as little as possible is surely a lost cause at this point, but what else does he have left? He raises his head to face the crowd.

Katniss and Peeta are a hell of a lot closer than he'd expected. Like right up here with him on the fucking dais. They both have their hands cuffed behind them and their own personal Peacekeepers.

"Fuck's sake, Thread, you miserable psychopath," Haymitch growls, rolling his eyes. "You really didn't want them to miss a second of this, did you?"

Katniss is encompassing every Peacekeeper on the platform in a glare of fiery death, an expression that is distantly related to that of any pissed off teenager except that it makes the recipient nervously scan her for hidden gasoline and matches, or maybe a stein of sulphuric acid. Haymitch would also kind of like to know how she manages to direct that look straight at five different people without moving her eyes a single millimeter. It's a pretty cool trick.

More than that he'd like Peeta to stop… fucking… _staring_. The kid is clearly in some kind of drastically altered state, maybe even having an out-of-body experience like Finnick told him you could 'enjoy' with the right pills. Briefly Haymitch lets himself imagine Peeta's disembodied spirit flying frantic loops around Katniss and around him, trying to wrap them both in a protective cocoon until the Peacekeepers give up and go away to find easier prey. Meanwhile his obviously abandoned body is just standing there staring at Haymitch like a hungry zombie. Haymitch looks away instinctively, dread creeping back into his mind. Then he returns Peeta's damned aggressive stare. What the _hell_?

"You know what?" he says, still staring back at Peeta. "Let them stay, then. Since they seem so into it." Goddamn Peeta. He fucking _tried_. "This is a really fucked up time for you to morph into a rational human being," he can't help growling at the boy.

Peeta blinks, the fixedness going out of his eyes. He doesn't know what to do, is completely adrift. And Haymitch's appearance isn't helping him think clearly. He'd been too busy with Thread to see what happened between Haymitch and the Peacekeeper who'd been escorting him, had only seen the bloody remains. But Haymitch's wrists are bound in an awkward fashion that would have made his hands useless as weapons. And his face and neck and hair are covered in blood. Peeta can't seem to pull his eyes away, even when Haymitch begins to look at him like he's just another enemy to be pulled down and torn apart, like he must have done to the Peacekeeper… Peeta finally manages to look away from the well-known visage rendered so gruesome. He immediately looks up again, though, his eyes wide. There's a bloody hole in Haymitch's abdomen, on the right side just above his waist and below the white twisting line of his old scar.

"They shot you," he says in a quiet, shocked voice. What can he do? There has to be something he can do. If he could only have a few minutes to think…

Haymitch looks down at the wooden boards under their feet. And there's Peeta, back in his body again. All that well-deserved anger and judgment is gone; now Haymitch will have to go back to feeling those things firsthand, instead of projecting them into the expression of a man who doesn't have the good sense to feel them.

A _boy_, Haymitch corrects himself. Peeta might be more normal when he finishes growing up.

He wishes he could have seen that.

"Let's get on with this," Haymitch says, hoping it will hurt. He hopes it will be quick, for the kids' sake and for his own. He's a coward, and he doesn't think he can handle very much more. But he deserves for this to hurt. He doesn't want to scream in front of them; but he can't forget that _they'll_ scream, their first night in the Capitol. _Katniss_ will scream. So much for that 'burn-you-alive' look.

Without looking away from any of them, Katniss examines the cage and turns it over in her mind. They're not going to flog Haymitch to death, even though that had obviously been their plan earlier. Instead, they put a bullet in him. The only way that could have happened is if Haymitch deliberately provoked them into losing control. And one of them must be about as in control of himself as a challenged bull, and about as intelligent, too. Else wise, Haymitch would have just gotten knocked down with the baton for whatever he'd said. She lovingly considers the possibility that it was Thread who shot him, their insane leader himself. But she can't really credit Thread being that out of control.

Whoever did it, Haymitch got one of them to shoot him and now they won't be able to carry out their original plan. And he doesn't even look or sound like it's really hurting him, not all that much. After they kill him she is going to be completely alone. And isn't this just a royally shitty moment to realize that he's the only other 'real' person, the only other one who will ever dwell in her level?

And what's with the cage? Well, it can be nothing but a version of the stocks where you get to lie down. He's made fools of them again. They don't know what to do with him. Probably they'll leave him in the cage for the day while Thread comes to terms with the loss of what would have been the highlight of his career here in 12. Sometime this evening a few of them will drag Haymitch back to the steps of the Justice Building and end his life with a bullet to the back of his head. If he doesn't manage to die on his own before then.

Another Peacekeepers ascends the stairs carrying a pail with a lid. "Insects, sir," the new arrival announces, holding out the pail.

Thread takes it and gives it a hard shake to knock off anything that might be clinging to the underside of the lid before opening it just a crack. Not many in there; it's less than a quarter filled. But it will get them started. There's plenty for two good handfuls.

"Lay the prisoner down and hold him nice and still."

Haymitch tries to twist away from them and gets nowhere except flat on his back with a splinter digging into his shoulder. Right where he was going anyway. Didn't even get loose for a second and make them grab for him this time. He keeps his eyes open but turns his head away from the kids and fixes his gaze on the approaching storm clouds.

Katniss is watching the exact moment when he gives up and goes away from them, and she feels right away how much heavier the world is now.

"What are you going to do?" Peeta asks.

"I'm going to do a little District 12 first aid," Thread answers him. He holds out a hand and someone is ready with a jar of honey.

Peeta looks on uneasily, telling himself it's okay (when did that become such a relative term?), they're not going to kill Haymitch after all, at least not yet, maybe not at all. Maybe the higher powers have decided to keep him. They're not going to flog him to death; that was just a scare tactic, just a sick joke at his and Katniss's expense. They're just going to put him in the cage for the usual three days, maybe less given his injury. It's going to be okay.

Thread pours the honey directly into the open wound, and Peeta actually feels a sudden stab of pain in his own belly, surely imagined but real enough for a second to make him gasp. Haymitch breathes harshly in the sudden hush, and it's too quiet here in this moment. How can a crowd possibly be that quiet? How, unless they're utterly rapt, leaning forward to catch every single sound.

Haymitch arches his spine against the wooden planks. The knobs of his shoulders stand out as he strains against the Peacekeepers pinning his arms down. He holds the twisted, rigid position for a few seconds before falling back with a thin cry. The quiet is shattered by his uneven breaths.

"There, he's ready," Thread announces. He sits back on his heels, admiring his handiwork. "Bring Katniss here," he summons. "Take off her cuffs, but keep a good hold on the brat."

Katniss's Peacekeeper shoves her forward.

"Get her on her knees!" Thread snaps, half-rising. "If she kicks it'll be your hide."

Katniss's knees hit the boards with a bruising jolt. They twist her arms up behind her as they remove the cuffs, pushing her forward until she's hunched over Haymitch's supine body. She struggles to slip their grasp, not even aware of the little growls of rage that issue from between her gritted teeth. If they let go of her hands for just a _second_…

"Calm yourself, girl," Thread sneers at her. "You want to listen carefully to this."

Katniss stops squirming and twisting. She turns her head and spits in Thread's face. "I'd have had your eyes out if your underlings hadn't saved you, Thread," she taunts, lips curled in a derisive little smile. "And _everybody knows it_."

"Well, maybe," Thread replies, matching her expression, one killer to another. "But you didn't, did you? Never waste time gloating unless your kill is incapacitated beyond recovery. You're just a naïve little girl, and _we_ know _that_. And speaking of eyes…" He seizes Haymitch's chin and presses his thumb against Haymitch's tightly closed right eye.

In the background Peeta cries out, "Don't!" Neither Katniss nor Thread turn to look at him, but both pause to listen to the scuffle taking place a few feet behind them, the grunts of the Peacekeepers and Peeta's staccato "_Let go_!" Katniss thinks, _Maybe he can; _thinks that if she somehow gets free she'll have to kill Haymitch first. Thread tilts his head in an exaggerated listening posture and smiles sardonically into Katniss's eyes, making her an unwilling conspirator in his mockery of Peeta.

"So, here's the deal," Thread resumes once Peeta is subdued. "You reach into that bucket and get a good handful of insects, and you stuff them into the gunshot wound. Got that, girl? Into, not on. You can even make it easier for your dogsbody, there." He nods towards Peeta. "The more you grab, the less he'll have to."

Katniss looks down at Haymitch, narrowing her eyes and stiffening her features into a thin-lipped scowl so that her chin won't quiver. _Thread would love for you to cry_, she tells herself. It helps, holding that thought with an iron grip. With a part of her mind, a large part, a spreading part that wants to cry and beg and lay herself on top of Haymitch in time-honored you'll-have-to-go-through-me-first courage/desperation, she visualizes those words on a loop.

Haymitch still has his eyes closed. He's not going to help her, unless that's what he's trying to do by not looking at her. Isn't this just _some_ initiation to being completely, irrevocably on her own. He's biting his lower lip, grinding his teeth into it. It has to be bleeding, although you couldn't tell for sure with the blood already covering his face. He's terrified, he _has_ to be. And his only outward expression of it is this disturbing self-mutilation. She might not have more courage than him, but under the circumstances she damn sure better not have less.

"And if I don't?" she asks coldly.

"If you don't, I'll take his eyes. And if you still don't, I'll strip him the rest of the way and castrate him just like they do with the sheep in District 10. And if you _still_ don't," Thread shrugs, spreads his hands. "Then I'm out of things to take if I want to be sure he'll last a few days. So I guess you and Peeta can go on down and join the audience. And my Peacekeepers will have three new wounds to put the bugs in."

She looks down at Haymitch, looks through him. And she wonders if she really must make this decision at all. Might she not just sort of hunker down, close the windows and fill the cracks in the walls with wadded rags and then make herself small like she always did when a bad storm came shrieking down on her and her slipping-down family and her assigned shack? It's all beyond her control, today and tomorrow and forever. And if she could ask Haymitch-

He would tell you to fucking get on with it.

She doesn't know if he would or not. He's already mostly gone; just enough of him left to be afraid and to suffer.

And _just enough_ not to be screaming or crying or begging for mercy. His eyes… Would he really suffer any more, be any more scared in his last few hours, for being blind?

"Give me the bucket," Katniss says in a low, choked voice.

"Katniss, _don't_," Peeta calls out sharply. She can hear the tears in his voice, and she hates him for it. Peeta can cry at what's become of them, the things she's discovering she can not only seriously consider but then go on and actually _do_. He's allowed to cry, but not her.

She looks into the mass of insects, shuddering. There are biting things in there, and stinging things. Two fat horseflies lumber over the brown-black, ever-moving surface, the biggest of the gruesome horde. Whoever caught them has pulled one wing off each, and she draws back involuntarily as the crippled flies roll over and lay with their legs waving madly and mandibles clicking before righting themselves again. All the winged samples have been similarly disabled. No wasps or hornets at least; but there are bumble bees, and centipedes, and swarms of red and black ants, dusty brown moths, crickets, beetles… Then she sees the roaches. The whole bottom layer of the pile is roaches. Katniss jerks back so suddenly that her Peacekeeper is startled and lets go of her. Her eyes are wide in panic, her head shaking back and forth so quick it looks like a nervous tic rather than a gesture of negation.

"No. I can't. I can't reach in there," she says urgently, sounding so young and so unlike herself.

"Afraid of bugs, girl?" Thread laughs at her, holding onto the bucket and then slapping the lid back on to shake it before the things that have been climbing the sides can escape. "Come on. Nothing in here is going to hurt you for more than a few seconds. No open wounds on your hands, are there?" He seems to find this last even more humorous than the famed Victor's unexpected squeamishness.

"I can't do this," Katniss repeats a little more firmly. "No. I won't do this."

"As you like it," Thread concedes. He sets the bucket aside and begins to press his thumb into Haymitch's right eye. The eye depresses, pushes back into Haymitch's skull. Any second now it will rupture, even with Thread pushing through his eyelid. Tears stream from it, clumping the golden lashes. Haymitch makes an animal sound, the high whine of a dog in pain. It's all he can do. He can't get loose or fight or do anything to stop this from happening, and he's losing his _eye_. Half blind, he'll be half blind. And then Thread will take the other one.

"Do it, Katniss," he blurts out, helpless to stop the plea. He doesn't want to be blind. To be blind during what's coming seems infinitely worse than any amount of pain could possibly be. How would he even know if he was still alive? It's stupid, but how would he _know_?

"Haymitch-" She'll explain. He must see that she can't. She wants to save him, she'd do anything to save him. But she can't reach in there. It's unthinkable. She literally won't be able to make herself do that because some things just go deeper than bravery or will. And that's just how things are. _She can't_.

But there's no way to say that. "Stop! I'll do it! I'll do it!" She still doesn't think she can. She can't let Thread blind him, and she can't do the thing that will stop Thread, and her heart is beating so hard that her chest hurts with each percussion. For a second she's frankly bewildered, at a loss, unable to move in any direction. But a second is all she has.

"Do it if you're going to, girl," Thread says, offering her the bucket again. "What happens here is entirely your choice. So… _decide_."

The lid is still on the bucket, so she takes it from him. She can hear the droning sound of them. "Haymitch," she says pleadingly, but he doesn't make a sound and he won't look at her. So she takes the lid off without looking down and hovers her right hand over the insects. She keeps her eyes fixed on him the entire time, silently begging a reprieve that she has just enough control left not to ask for out loud. She knows she has no right to look for mercy from him. "One… two… three."

Katniss plunges her hand deep into the bucket, her eyes screwing shut and her breath hitching in revulsion. She closes her fingers around them. Chitinous bodies writhe against her palm and wriggle between her fingers. Something stings her, and she nearly opens her hand at that. Adrenalin floods her and she's _sure_ she's going to lose her grip on the mass. Her hand is shaking, and she can't even tell if it's still closed with all these things moving against her. Something else bites her, and then there's a second sting.

Thread grabs her wrist, ignoring an escaped roach that scitters over his own hand. He guides her, all unresisting. So it's Thread who brings her hand down onto Haymitch's bared abdomen and the gory wound. It's Thread who does that, but it's her hand filled with insects, and she feels Haymitch suck in his belly, trying to draw away. She feels that and understands how badly it must hurt already, the pure grit he must be putting into the effort not to scream, how even her touch is now part of the torture.

Thread lets go of her, damning her to do this part of it on her own. "Go on," he urges, his voice quiet now and obscenely eager. "Push them in deep. Do it now, or I'll blind him."

So Katniss does it. She presses her hand down into the blood and honey. And he screams then. Of course he does. He screams, and it's not the first time she's heard him do that. But this is now, and it's so different that there should be a different word for it, a whole new vocabulary, new inflections and expressions and gestures that acknowledge that one has finally discarded the very last of their naiveté and now sees what the world _really_ is. This time the sound brings no compulsion or weariness or resentment, as his or anyone else's screams have of old. She is not here to help. She won't help. No one will help. He'll never, ever, feel anything again except the pain.

She rises to her feet like a marionette pulled up slowly and carefully, clearly controlled by an amateur. For a few seconds she rests there, head bowed, perhaps looking at her victim. Then she turns and descends the stairs. No one moves to stop her. Katniss moves through the crowd, which parts for her like crowds always do now. Only once does someone grab her arm and attempt to prevent her escape. Without any conscious will she turns and strikes the person across the face, open handed but very hard. The restraining hand falls away and she turns and resumes her walk in an inviolate pocket of solitude.

Peeta watches her go, his cheek still stinging. He watches all these people they both know step back as she approaches and stare at her and do _nothing_. Not one of them reaches out to help her. Dumb, they only stare. These people they are risking _everything_ for…

He's crying a little, and everything is blurred and rainbow-hued as he turns back to the cage. Leaving now is something he can't even consider. Surely her mother and her sister will find her, look after her. They'll have to.

One of the Peacekeepers takes his arm and drags him forward. "Your turn." He's shoved down on his knees beside the body of his brother. Haymitch is breathing heavily, shaking, but he's got himself under a tenuous sort of control again. Trapped gray eyes roll up to Peeta and reveal just a glimmer of tears before Haymitch turns his face away and closes his eyes tightly. His throat moves as he swallows repeatedly. The Peacekeeper unlocks Peeta's cuffs and Peeta sits back on his heels and takes Haymitch's hands as well as the awkward binding will allow.

"There," he says. He swallows, too, and clears his throat, and his voice steadies a little. "It's not going to last much longer. Just- just go to sleep if you can."

Haymitch nods, once. Fuck, it _hurts_. They're moving around in the wound, and he can feel them deeper inside him, burrowing into him, already starting to eat his insides. Movement seems to agitate the fuckers. When he tenses they sting, the ones still on the surface. No matter how still he tries to stay, they bite and dig. They never stop. Time to time he'll think he's getting used to the sensation, and then it'll get so much worse. He'd screamed. If Peeta does that, what Katniss did, he will again.

Thread holds the bucket out to Peeta. "Go on, boy. Just like Katniss did."

"Please don't make me do that," Peeta says evenly. "I'm sorry we jumped you. But if you need to punish us for that, then flog me. You've done enough to Haymitch, haven't you? He's dying. Please, let that be enough."

"Think he'd rather be blinded than have a few more bugs put in him, do you?" Thread sneers contemptuously at the boy who would never, in a million years, have made it out of the Arena if Katniss hadn't been there for him to hide behind. "Get on with it. The damage is done. You could even think of it as doing him a favor. More bugs might let him die quicker."

"Please, Thread. I'm begging you to show some- some mercy."

Thread snorts. "You're about the saddest little clown I've ever seen. Now, get the fuck on with it."

"Fine," Peeta concedes. "If you'll kill him right afterwards."

Surprised, Thread considers the new terms for a moment. Then he grins. "No. But- I'll let you kill him right afterwards."

Peeta swallows, looking down at Haymitch. "Okay. I put the bugs in him, and right afterwards I get to kill him. Quick and painless. I get to shoot him in the head." He looks hard at Thread, willing him to agree.

Thread inclines his head sardonically. He unholsters his gun, cracks the chamber, and empties out all but one bullet before closing it again. "Deal. Do something stupid and you'll regret it for the rest of your natural born life, starting right here, today."

"Okay, then. Deal," Peeta says. He takes a steadying breath. He doesn't want to speak to Haymitch here, with Thread exhaling derision and malevolence on them and the crowd listening in. His last words to Haymitch the night before, in the jail, had been weak; but at least it had been just the two of them. At least Haymitch had been on his feet, those expressive gray eyes bright with the familiar cleverness and warmth and strength under all the fear. At least the situation had been anything other than what it is now.

He wants Haymitch's permission to do this but knows the man may already be too out of his mind to give it. He wants reassurance that this is what needs to be done; but what other choice is left? He can't leave Haymitch here to die slowly, and in agony, all that resilience and pride and doomed courage stripped away as pain and fever and dehydration and withdrawal drive him insane. All the while lying in a _cage_… in the middle of the _Square_… while all of these people just _watch_.

What he really wants is to be forgiven one final time, because in a couple of minutes he'll be beyond forgiveness forever. They've finally made him into one of their killers. And before he commits that final betrayal he's going to have to undo every effort he ever made to befriend this man and earn his trust.

Just do it quickly, he tells himself. Reach into the bucket, grab the insects, push them into the wound, take the gun, put it against his temple, and pull the trigger. Six steps. Two minutes, maybe less. Just do it quickly and don't think about anything until it's done. There'll be time to deal with all of this afterwards; now _do it_.

"You'll always be our brother," he says quickly, feeling himself start to cry again. "We'll never forget you." Thread says something, but Peeta doesn't catch the sense of the words even though they're spoken from less than two feet away. He reaches with badly shaking hands, knocks the lid off the bucket, and plunges his hand in. Movement, things biting and stinging and pushing at him- it doesn't hurt- and he closes his hand, swings it out, and presses it hard against Haymitch's damaged flesh. He doesn't know if Haymitch screams or not, is never certain afterwards. Everything is distorted. It's like being underwater- like putting his head under the warm and comforting water in the bathtub and suddenly finding it turned icy cold and the surface blocked by thick glass.

"Give me the gun!" he demands, thrusting his hand out.

"Not likely, boy," Thread pronounces with calm satisfaction. Unhurriedly he stands and brushes himself off. "You two-" he points at the two closest Peacekeepers. "get the prisoner into the cage. And someone take Peeta off the dais and mind him until he gets himself under control."

Peeta listens to this with incredulity, at first feeling only shocked bewilderment. "You said-" Rough hands drag him up again and begin to shove him toward the stairs. Behind him he can hear Haymitch perfectly well now. He's gasping as they drag him over and shove him into the open cage, a harsh, ragged tearing at the air.

And disbelief becomes stark rage. "You dirty, lying, sadistic fuck!" he yells, lunging away from the Peacekeeper who's trying to force him down the stairs.

Thread is ready for him this time, and as Peeta comes at him he puts aside his compunctions about using weapons against a weaker opponent without the slightest hesitation. He clubs the teenager soundly on the side of the head. The baton is meant to be a non-lethal deterrent, and Peeta doesn't lose consciousness. But the blow knocks him to the ground stunned, and he's promptly cuffed and dragged down the stairs by one ankle.

Thread turns to survey the condemned. Haymitch is on his left side, providing a good view of the bloody tunnel in him. He's retching, his ribs heaving. Insects swarm and buzz angrily in his wound, appearing to churn the blood and raw tissue in there.

"'Always our brother'," Thread says to himself, amused. "Well, as often as dogs and bitches breed… I guess anything's possible."


	66. Cold Rain

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 66**

For a long while Peeta stands where the Peacekeeper left him, maybe ten feet from the dais. Behind him, the crowd gradually melts away from the edge inwards. Peeta keeps his eyes on Haymitch, just in case Haymitch looks towards him. The man is still except for the periodic twitching rise and fall of his ribs. His bound wrists obscure his face, makeshift privacy or just the only marginally comfortable position to rest them in. A cloud of flies and midges hover over his side, and his skin is grotesquely coated with metallic-colored flies crawling to and fro, sluggish and gravid. Some larger bug moves up his side as he lies bound and helpless to brush it away. Gods, he must be in so much pain. And there's nothing Peeta can do to help him.

Peeta listens to the people around him, wanting neither to focus on Haymitch nor to be distracted from him. He doesn't know which would be worse; he can't think, can't concentrate. He listens to them.

"Don't have ten marks, sir," he hears a man saying from a few feet to his left.

"You can contribute five marks, then," someone replies shortly.

"Don't _have_ it. I don't have _anything_." The voice is gruff and accusatory.

"Find it, or you can have ten lashes instead. Someone'll be around to your house tomorrow morning to collect your contribution."

"Yes. Sir." Peeta can hear the roll of the eyes, just as he knows without looking that the man has already turned to go.

"Stop," the other voice demands angrily; Peeta finally looks in that direction, mouthing before he does: _I'm still here, Haymitch. I swear I won't leave you_.

The Peacekeeper is holding an electronic stylus and notepad out to the man he's conversing with. The man has turned back to him, wary and defiant. He's dressed in threadbare old trousers tied about his thin waist with a bit of braided rope and a canvas shirt that hangs on him. A crutch is socked up under his right arm and his right foot is wrapped and held just barely above the ground.

"Write your name on the line, and your bet for how long the prisoner will last."

The man gives the pad a repulsed look, then sighs and reaches for it. He jots something down and hands it back.

"One hundred years," the Peacekeeper reads, a clear tone of mockery in his voice.

"That's my bet," the districter says flatly.

"Fine. You may go," the Peacekeeper replies in an exaggeratedly polite tone. He watches the man hobble away and Peeta hears him mutter to himself, "We should have done this door-to-door tomorrow."

"What the hell _are_ you doing?" Peeta asks carefully.

The Peacekeeper looks at him briefly, then finds something interesting to study on the blanked pad. "Betting pool on the prisoner's lifespan. Thread's orders. But I think you're exempt."

"How gracious of Thread," Peeta says bitterly. "Are _you_ going to put down a bet?"

The Peacekeeper looks up suspiciously. "It's for districters."

"No, you should get in on this. Take a guess," Peeta invites, stepping closer. "Take a guess on how long Haymitch Abernathy- oh sorry, the _prisoner_\- is going to survive this brutal, gratuitous torture." He waves a hand towards the cage. "But while you're at it, take a good long look. Because they could do this to anyone. Even you."

The Peacekeeper's eyes move to the cage, and he does seem to look hard for a long moment. Then he shakes his head, scowling. "Tone it down a little, would you? Shit, the betting pool's a fucking _stunt_. Shortest guess we've had so far is twenty-five years." He turns and walks away briskly before Peeta can say anything else.

Peeta watches him go, a dismal feeling a futility rising up in his mind. That man didn't hear a word he said. Nothing's ever going to change, except for the worse.

Suddenly he needs to be with Katniss. He turns back to the cage, shaking his head. He _wants_ to be with Katniss. He wants to be anywhere but here. But it doesn't matter what he wants, does it? If Haymitch looks for him, at any time between now and the end, he'll see Peeta right here: watching, marking this, committing it to memory.

But his anxiety is increasing minute to minute. He _feels_ like he needs to be with Katniss. Is this what a panic attack feels like, then? Well, if he was ever going to have one it would be here.

"She's fine," he says very quietly, aware that he's losing ground. "_She's_ fine. At the house, or at her mother's." Unless she snuck out into the woods, in the middle of the day, when she'll almost certainly be spotted. "She's fine. And so are you, and it doesn't matter if you're not, anyway. You have to stay." But Haymitch- he's- well this, this thing- "His _death,_" Peeta says harshly to himself. His _death_ is going to take hours. Peeta can't run very fast, but he _can_ run (jog, at least). He could go and make sure Katniss is okay and come right back. He's the only one left to protect her, now. Haymitch doesn't seem to be looking at him. His wrists are still up in front of his face. He's probably unconscious.

So Peeta leaves him there, trying not to think about whether Haymitch will still be alive when he gets back. If Katniss is with her mother and Prim, fine. If not, he'll bring them to his and Katniss's house to stay with her. Either way, he'll ask Prim to come and get him right away if she shows any signs of going off half-cocked. Then he'll run back to the Square, and he won't leave again.

He makes it back to the Village in record time, out of breath, the remains of his right leg throbbing in time with his steps. He bursts into their house, knowing already that she's not there. Still he checks everywhere, calling for her over and over, like she might not have heard him from one room over.

Flying out of the house again, Peeta trips and falls down the three stone steps at the front door. He catches himself, skinning both palms but maybe saving himself a cracked tooth or a bloodied nose. "Fuck!" he swears, angry and frustrated and mostly more scared than he can remember being since the Arena. "Stupid fucking useless thing! Fuck!" He roughly kneads his thigh, not helping the pain there at all. He clambers back up onto his feet and staggers away towards the Seam, the front door standing wide open behind him. He can't run anymore, and he knows she won't be at her mother's house. How could he have let her go off on her own? "Stupid, stupid, stupid," he chants as he walks a little faster.

His fears are confirmed before he even gets all the way to the dingy little shack clinging to one side of a narrow dirt road and bracketed by similar shacks. Prim is waiting for him, leaning against the unfinished wood next to the door. Her arms are crossed tightly, hugging her slender frame.

"Hi, Peeta," she says, looking up briefly. "Don't go in there. Mom's- mom's not right at the moment." She shivers, and her arms tighten their embrace.

"Have you seen Katniss?" Peeta asks, and Prim slowly starts to raise her head. Peeta steps up to her quickly, needing to forestall at least this part of everything. He calls up a smile for her and puts a hand on her shoulder. Prim hugs him, and Peeta thinks how fragile she feels in his arms, how completely unlike Katniss or Elsabet or the kind of father who would dare take his daughter beyond the fence and teach her to hunt. Poor little changeling. In another world she and he would both have died, but Haymitch would still be alive and Katniss would be safe.

Prim steps back, dry-eyed and brittle. "Thanks, Peeta. For being so nice. Katniss is gone," she says simply.

Peeta nods, trying to think what to do now. "The woods?" he whispers, glancing around to make sure no one else is too near.

"Peacekeepers came and took her away to the train station. She told us she had to go to the Capitol for a couple of weeks to take Haymitch's place as the senior Victor."

"They can't have taken her already. Haymitch isn't even dead yet," Peeta protests.

Prim utters a queer little laugh and speaks in a rush. "What did you bet? I bet fifty years. They tried to make mom bet, too, but she pretended she couldn't hear them. She pretended not to notice the Peacekeeper with the notepad. He followed us a little, but she never turned. I was afraid he'd, you know, do something to her. But he let us go." She looks back toward the door of the shack. "I don't think she was pretending," Prim admits. "I wish Katniss were here."

"How could they take her when Haymitch isn't even dead yet?" Peeta asks, disregarding Prim's irrelevant ranting. "She didn't even get to say goodbye!" There aren't really words for this, but he tries again. "She didn't get any closure." Closure. Gods. He's talking about _closure_, like Haymitch died unexpectedly in some accident, like he fell off a roof or something. What a nice, neat word 'closure' is.

Prim sighs like the crepitating leaves in a chilling wind. "Katniss wouldn't have wanted to see Haymitch anymore, not like he is now. That wouldn't have been saying goodbye; that would have just been prolonging the pain. You shouldn't go back either, Peeta. You can't help him, anymore than Katniss could have." She reaches out and takes Peeta's hand in her much smaller one. "Come on. I'll walk home with you. Mom'll be okay on her own for a while."

"I have to go back," Peeta says, disengaging his hand. "I promised him I wouldn't leave. But I did leave. And Katniss is gone. He might already be unconscious or comatose." Or dead. "He might have looked for me before he went under. Everyone left. The Peacekeepers can't be the last people he ever sees."

"Alright," Prim says, listening worriedly to Peeta's rambling talk. She hugs herself and rests her head against the rough wood and doesn't watch as he leaves, too.

The storm breaks before he gets all the way back. There's a jagged scratch of lightening, immediately followed by a resounding crash, and then Peeta's walking through sheeting rain. He's soaked, chilled, bowing his head and hunching his shoulders against the onslaught. What must it be like to lie out in this, and not even be able to sit up? Haymitch will get pneumonia if he's left out in this.

Peeta comes as close to the cage as he can, but the guard standing under his umbrella stops him ten feet away. Gods, it's so cold. "Hey," he calls out to the Peacekeeper. Approaching, he's careful to keep his hands at his sides, even holds them out from his body a little, palms facing the other. The Peacekeeper touches the handle of his baton, but it's only in casual warning.

Peeta stops just short of the shelter of the oversized umbrella. "Listen, let him have my shirt. Just until it stops raining."

"Not allowed."

"Really? Thread actually told you that you couldn't drape my shirt over him? He's going to die before morning if you just let him lie out in this."

"So what? Sooner he dies the better. Pneumonia's probably the best the poor devil can hope for."

Peeta shakes his head, refusing to hear that. "I can pay you. I'll be going to the Capitol soon. I can bring you back something, if you'd like," he offers.

The Peacekeeper considers it, looking silently around the storm-darkened, deserted Square.

"Please," Peeta says quietly. "He's suffering."

"Fine," the Peacekeeper finally concedes, very much against his better judgment. Hell, why not? Having a Victor owe him a favor might come in handy, the way things are going around here. What's the worst that could come of it?

"Thank you," Peeta says sincerely. He pulls off his shirt, shuddering as the cold rain strikes his bare chest and belly and back. Not that a soaking wet shirt is going to provide much warmth. But it's something, one tiny thing he can do.

The Peacekeeper takes a key from his belt and unlocks the cage. It's a smallish cage, originally used for holding sows and piglets for sale. It's something less than five feet long, maybe three feet wide and three feet high. The Peacekeeper has to crouch to get into it. His foot nudges Haymitch's back and Haymitch rouses enough to growl a hoarse curse.

"Fuck off. Get your own goddamn cage. Barely room for me to die in here as it is." He gives a barking cough that ends in a groan. "Fucking _bugs_. Fucking sadistic freaks. Damn you all." He pushes his nose and forehead against his wrists, protecting the tiny pocket of warmth his breath has created against his forearms. His teeth are chattering. The speech has exhausted him, and he sinks back to the miserable half-waking state he'd been in before the Peacekeeper had jostled him. There, as before, his fleeing consciousness catches on the drilling pain filling his abdomen and the right side of his chest and refuses to recede any further. Damned thing's more a tumor than a brain. He feels hallucinations coming on, and withdrawal. You know- depending on how long this shit lasts. One thing to say for it- he's a whole hell of a lot less afraid of death than he was when he woke up this morning.

Something heavy draped over him, right over the part that hurts so ferociously. The pressure is so sudden and terrible that Haymitch at first thinks the asshole kicked him. It's only when the weight stays put that he's able to sort out what it really is. He guesses he must already be swelling up like a decomposing corpse for a rain-drenched shirt to feel like that. He tries senselessly to reach it and comes up against the bindings. Haymitch shoves his face against his wrists again, hoping he's not going to throw up. Stubborn and hating, he sets his teeth against the temptation to ask the Peacekeeper to take it off. He got through almost forty-three years without ever asking one of them for anything, except of course asking the Chief Freak not to shoot Katniss.

After the initial shock of the pressure, it's alright. It's better. Better than the constant drum of the rain into the gruesome wound. It lets him push his injured mind away from the bugs, and the maddening revulsion and hatred. Trying not to question the reprieve, Haymitch begins telling himself it's only more pain, nothing he isn't used to. The axe had hurt more than this; it had to have. S'okay. He sighs, coughs weakly, and finally slips below the level of consciousness.


	67. Cinnamon

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: T-rating on this one, for theme. You've been warned.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 67**

Katniss is escorted to her new apartment by a Capitol Guardsman in a perfectly immaculate scarlet and snow uniform. He leads the way, not even looking back to make sure she's following. He hasn't tried to touch her. Katniss does follow him, head held high, looking neither left nor right. Her instincts are clamoring at her to be more wary, to check her surroundings, to be ready to fight. She controls them, tries to shut them out. Snow has won, she is taken, and whoever comes will have her.

Her escort unlocks the door and steps back with a diffident nod. "Here you are, Miss Everdeen."

She steps through the door and doesn't turn as it clicks gently to and locks behind her. She has two hours to 'get settled in' before her driver will be here to convey her to her first appointment. Automatically she inhales the air of this new place through her nose, catching a faint lingering odor of cinnamon. After another minute or so she walks forward to the lavender couch and sits down to wait.

"Hello, Miss Everdeen," a sly voice says from behind her. "All alone, are you? I'll keep you company."

Katniss tenses at the first syllable. You wouldn't notice if you weren't watching her very closely. By the end of her name she's made herself relax so she can show this bastard just how insignificant he is to her. She punctuates his question with a just-audible sigh. To his offer she responds with a disinterested, "If you like." Feeling anything but disinterested. Haymitch managed almost two years before he killed one of the talking dicks. She should have asked him what his secret was.

Footsteps approach her from behind. She won't look, but she can't help assessing. He's light on his feet. Barefoot. Slender or young or both.

He swings over the back of the couch and lands cross-legged beside her, and her instincts triumph and force her to her feet with alacrity.

Finnick grins up at her, looking way too pleased with himself. "Whoa, there, firecracker," he says. He's dressed in a perfectly tailored egg-shell colored shirt and even more _perfectly_ _tailored_ matching pants. His coppery hair glints with strands of metallic gold. He returns her once-over and drops her a lascivious wink.

Getting over her surprise, Katniss snorts in disdain and adjourns to one of the chairs facing the couch. "Nice outfit."

Finnick inclines his head. "Well, I could hardly wear white, could I?"

"Funny," Katniss deadpans, rolling her eyes. "Are you here to show me the ropes? Fuck me?" She leans forward and asks, "Are you going to _mentor_ me, Finnick?"

"Dangerous job, that. Where is your Mentor, firefly? Where's Haymitch?"

"Dying in a cage, being eaten alive by insects that Peeta and I stuffed into a gunshot wound in his side." She meant for it to come out hard and hating, an impregnable stone wall avalanched down between them. Every word spoken in a place such as this should by rights be a declaration of hate and a brick in the wall. But saying summons doing. She remembers the squirming mass of them in the bucket, the hideous alien buzzing against her hand, and some of them had stung her. She stares down at her hands, where the red dots still show. And he'd screamed…

"Don't you care at all?" Finnick asks her softly.

Katniss puts her head down and sobs. She hadn't thought she would. Peeta had cried, cried and begged them for mercy as though they might be swayed. He'd cried watching her; he'd cried when they'd forced him to commit the same unforgivable betrayal. She hadn't cried at all. Maybe because Haymitch would have told her not to.

It's done; it will never wash off her. And much as she hates all of them, if this is her life now, well, no one ever deserved this more than she does.

Finnick comes over and sits on the floor by her chair, close but not touching. Katniss, new to the List and all that comes with it, reaches out desperately. After a second's hesitation, Finnick takes her hand and squeezes it. "You didn't kill him, Katniss. Snow killed him."

"I put fucking insects in him!" Katniss chokes out with a violent shudder.

"Alright. You killed him. We're both killers. He was, too." Finnick pauses, expecting another outburst, but Katniss is quiet except for the breathy sounds of her continued weeping. "So is Peeta, now. Same difference, though. We all grew our fangs right here in the Capitol."

Katniss wipes her eyes on the filigreed sleeve of her dress, then wipes her nose on it, too. "This was his apartment. He called it the Cell." She looks around, hating it. "They didn't tell me they were setting me up in his apartment. And they've put in new furniture, at least in this room. I know because of the cinnamon. He tried to wash it off when he came home, but those scents they use hang around like skunk."

Finnick chuckles. "Wonder if Peeta ever thought of mentioning _that_ in an interview."

Katniss sniffs, smelling the cinnamon and forcing the insects back into their permanent home in the recesses of her mind. "Why are you here, Finnick?"

"Got something for you, fireball. A little present to celebrate your deflowering."

Katniss gives him a disgusted look. "You're a pig."

Finnick's mouth tightens for just a second, before the sarcastic smile comes blooming back. He claps a hand to his chest theatrically. "Oh, shot to the heart! No one's used quite that descriptor before." He slides his fingers into the pocket at the hem of his shirt, and Katniss wonders if he can even get his fingers into the pockets of his painted-on pants. Hooking out a tiny jeweled box, he presents it to her in his open palm.

Katniss has to hold the trinket up to her eyes and squint to undo the tiny silver clasp. The inside is lined with a fold of royal purple velvet, and nestled in that is a rose-pink pill.

"No, thanks," Katniss says, shaking her head and holding it out for him to take back.

"Want to enjoy every minute of your first rape, do you?" Finnick taunts.

"Well, stoned or not, it's still going to be _rape_, isn't it?" she rejoins, throwing the ugly word back at him defiantly. "Offer your gift to Peeta. I hear it hurts you boys more." Damned if she's going to let Finnick Odair shame her.

"You know, you're way more of a bitch than people give you credit for," Finnick remarks without the slightest rancor. "Last chance, firestorm. You've got Ancius tonight, and he likes water sports."

"Water sports?" Katniss asks in confusion, and then her face reddens as she makes the obvious translation. She wavers another few seconds, then tosses the pill into her mouth and forces it down dry. There's really not a single reason she can think of to stay clear-headed anymore.


	68. Candy From Strange Men

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review, Wonderishome! Um… one out of three?

Note2: T-rating again, for theme and such.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 68**

"Room 110, Miss Everdeen," the driver informs her, holding open the door of the town car. "I will return to collect you in three hours. Just come downstairs when the chime sounds."

"Fine," Katniss says curtly. She turns without a backwards glance and clip-clops toward the glass doors in her color-coordinated high heels. Her blue dress is the female equivalent of Finnick's get-up, hugging her breasts and her waist closely without actually showing more than the barest hint of cleavage. She guesses this is supposed to be enticing, a little tease to make the rich ones want to pay for the privilege of seeing more. Her mind flies briefly to how Haymitch must have looked in this style of dress. She hadn't exactly let her eyes linger on Finnick earlier, but she'd seen enough to know that she wouldn't have had any difficulty guessing his size if she'd wanted to. She tries to picture Peeta and then stops trying. For some reason envisioning Peeta in such a dehumanizing costume hurts a lot more than it did with Haymitch.

The pill doesn't seem to be doing anything. She wonders if she can actually let one of them piss on her. She wonders if that ever happened to Haymitch.

"You put insects in him. You can do anything you set your mind to," she cheers herself on sarcastically. "Oh yes, you'll be surprised by how much you can do."

She clomps over to the elevators and jabs at the call button, the direction of her thoughts shifting without improving at all. She finally got reliable birth control, anyway. No well-bred sybarites scrutinizing future babies and wondering. That might spoil their whole day. So her yet-to-appear handler will be giving her an injection every three months. She's officially moved from breeding stock to bed-slave, and she'll finally be able to answer that burning question of which status is more degrading.

"Miss?" the desk clerk calls, waving to her. Katniss tosses him a deliberate look and presses the button again.

"Miss? _Ahem_," the man insists.

Katniss steps into the elevator and presses the 'close' button as the startled man attempts to hurry around the counter. A minute later, she marches up to room 110 and raps on the door. Then she raises up on tiptoe and leans against the doorframe so that her chest will fill the peephole's view.

The door opens and she bounces back down onto her heels, smiles, and sing-songs, "I'm Katniss! You must be the really lonely guy!"

Plutarch blinks at her, taken aback. His surprise endures only a brief moment before he smiles back and motions her in without comment. Haymitch's protégé. Of course.

"Ancius, right?" Katniss inquires in a blithe tone that needs more practice.

"Plutarch Heavensbee, Head Gamemaker," Plutarch corrects her, puffing out his chest unconsciously at the title. "A friend of Haymitch's."

Katniss looks at him more sharply when he says that. "Haymitch didn't have any friends in the Capitol. _You_ don't say his name anymore." She feels her careless façade slipping, but hell, she doesn't know if she can do this. What he did… and now her… It's _sick._

"I wouldn't think I'd be to your tastes," she blunders on, grasping after her carefully constructed mask.

Plutarch smiles, and it's an expression she would have called charming had she seen it on a man back home. There's knowing and amusement, and just a hint of ruefulness in it. "Let's just say I'm a fancier of a personality type more than of a body type." He moves to the mini-bar and brings forth a bottle of vodka and a cut crystal decanter of what she assumes is orange juice. Katniss watches as he mixes two drinks.

"I don't drink. Sorry," she says with great insincerity.

"Oh, come on. Lighten up," Plutarch chides with some exasperation. You'd think sex was dental surgery. Twelve must be a very prudish district indeed. Regaining his pleasant tone, he shrugs and offers: "Tea? Milk? Water?"

"I'd really rather just get on with it," Katniss declares, and damned if she isn't slumping into that very same sullen posture.

"Well, I want to have a drink and talk first," he says, willing himself to speak in a friendly manner. If he doesn't get her to drink something he's going to have to rework this whole carefully thought-out plan in the next fifteen minutes, and here she is digging her heels in. Could he overpower her and force something down her throat? She probably twists and claws and bites like a wild cat.

"Water," Katniss assents grudgingly. Haymitch shared a drink with this man and _talked_ with him before it happened. She didn't want to know that. He's dead, beyond the reach of pride or shame, but she still didn't want to know that.

He sets the bottle of water in front of her and watches her pointedly check that the seal's intact and turn it upside down to check for pin holes before opening it and taking a swallow.

Plutarch seats himself in the chair across from her and folds his hands. "Tell me about yourself."

"I'm eighteen. I'm married. I have a young child. But those things are probably turn-ons for you, aren't they? Some fucked up version of primae noctis, right?"

Plutarch sips his drink. "Keep talking."

Katniss tosses her head in a proud, scornful, and unwittingly beautiful movement. "Why don't you tell me about yourself?" she asks in a voice dripping with honey. "I want to know all about Plutarch Heavensbee, Head Gamemaker."

"Haymitch preferred straight vodka, but he got good about swallowing whatever I gave him," Plutarch prods. Just to keep her talking. Not because he's starting to feel piqued.

"You don't say his name anymore," Katniss warns, narrowing her eyes down to dangerous slits.

"And if I do?"

"Your choice. But this isn't going to be nearly as much fun for you if I move kneeing you in the balls to the top of my agenda," Katniss says innocently, spreading her hands.

"You haven't met your handler yet," Plutarch concludes ominously.

"Yeti," Katniss chirrups brightly, her aspect totally different from what it was bare seconds ago. "My handler's a hairy old yeti."

"Uh huh," Plutarch agrees, smiling and nodding. Finally! The slex is supposed to kick in within seconds of the subject taking a drink. He'd almost started to think Finnick hadn't gotten her to take it. "How about a walk?"

Katniss smiles widely. "I feel like I could walk for miles."

"Good. Take my arm," Plutarch instructs. She obeys instantly, a bright smile still fixed on her face. "You know the great thing about this?" Plutarch asks his charge as they step out into the hall.

"_You're_ great. I love you."

"The great part is that you're going to remember every silly thing you said or did when this wears off." Plutarch taps the tip of her nose like he would do to a five year old, unable to resist tweaking her a little after her earlier behavior. "Isn't that just the _best_?"

Katniss nods enthusiastically and breaks away to go twirling up and down the hall in an apparent effort to make her skirt fly straight out. Laughing, Plutarch catches her by the arm. "Come along, now." Chances are this mild dose of embarrassment will just make her sulk for a while, but it's always possible that she's different enough from Haymitch to learn something from it.

Walking through the lobby, Plutarch waves to the receptionist. "Miss Everdeen is in need of some fresh air," he says in a decidedly put-upon tone, tipping is head toward Katniss meaningfully.

Taking in her obviously high-as-a-kite state (her eyes are just about black, her pupils are so dilated) the receptionist chuckles. "Uh-oh. Bad girl," he commiserates humorously.

"Yes, she is. I'll have her back in thirty minutes, one way or the other."

"Do you want me to call her driver back, sir?" the receptionists asks solicitously, his eyes still sparkling with the pleasure some people only get from knowing someone else is about to catch hell.

Plutarch pretends to consider for a few seconds, keeping a firm hold on Katniss and conscientiously tugging her away from the pink tea roses before she can start plucking them. "No, I'll give her a little time, I think."

"Whatever you say, sir."

Plutarch waves, Katniss waves more exuberantly, the receptionist waves at her mockingly, and Plutarch and Katniss finally escape out onto the street.

"Come along, my girl. Step lively," Plutarch tells her.

Nine blocks from the Lovely Baltic a Class L light hovercraft waits to take to the sky. It's one of a fleet of ten stored in the secure facility for transporting small parties between Districts or to the Outlands on government business. Another fifteen Class S mid-sizes sleep one floor lower. Plutarch walks quickly, keeps a hand wrapped around Katniss's wrist, and smiles smiles smiles. He's got a planted guard, an idling hovercraft loaded with more than twice its stated capacity, and twenty-four other hovercraft with egg explosives hidden in various places within them, waiting for the vibration of a start-up to set them off. As of today, life as he's always known it is over.

He's about to become a marked man.


	69. The Girl in the Dress

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review, Clavain! Too kind, too kind.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 69**

There are three even taps on the door, and Snow looks up from the live video feed set at the corner of his desk. He's been contemplating the view from District 12, where Haymitch continues to shake and choke up blood-streaked vomit and still somehow keep breathing. It's boring. He has so many other demands on his time. The execution had been entertaining, especially Katniss's unexpected participation, but since then the show's become so dull that Snow doubts even the other 12ers are still interested.

Snow has had the screen up constantly, there on the corner of his desk. He mutes the sound when necessary, but he never turns off the screen. Haymitch had been forever his 'problem child'. And as the old saying goes, if he'd been harsh with him on occasion it had only been to make him a better person. One with a more realistic view of his position, his responsibilities, and the inescapable fact that for any hierarchy to function the majority must be on the lowest tier and that was the role he'd been born to play. Unfortunately, it was a lesson he'd proved incapable of grasping even with as much special attention as he'd received. Haymitch represents a minor failure. Snow wants to be watching at the moment when he actually dies. Until then, he's simply unfinished business.

Snow presses the button to allow the Avox to enter. As the door opens and the Avox slips in he hears a commotion outside in the hall: the guards evidently holding someone back from bursting into his office uninvited. Snow raises an eyebrow even as the door clicks softly closed and the noise is abruptly cut off. He takes the card from the silver tray, and an unaccustomed feeling of dread suddenly takes hold in the pit of his stomach. What can this be?

The card is cream colored, with a cascade of pink foil roses playing down one side. It's lavender-scented. The name is in calligraphy that's so elaborate of loops and frills that only the first letter of each name is immediately decipherable: CS. The person so unwisely arguing with the guards outside is his only daughter, Corabellen Snow. Corabellen has never once entered his office in her forty-two years of existence to date.

"Send her in," he says briskly. His eyes flicker to the screen again, but for the first time the sight of the convulsing figure in the silver cage seems to make him uneasy. His finger hits the mute button on the projector, and the heaving gasps cease.

Corabellen rushes in, taking rapid tiny steps, moving as fast as her dress and heels will allow. She runs right into the desk, catching herself on the edge of it. Her eyes are wide and darting, her expression almost frantic. She's breathing hard, almost gasping, and Snow feels the dread escalating into something even more alien. Something horribly close to fear.

"Stop that," he commands abruptly. Corabellen's eyes stop darting around and fasten on him. She makes a tiny sound, almost a whimper.

"Sit down, my dear one," Snow bids her more kindly, getting his demeanor back under control. He gives her an affectionate smile (he'd mastered this expression decades ago, standing in front of a mirror and experimenting until he figured out what particular arrangement of features banished menace and intimidation, watered down strength, substituted that quality people were pleased to call 'warmth'). "Compose yourself. Then you may tell me what brings you here, and I will fix it." He leans back in his chair, broadcasting his own serenity and his ultimate control of the situation across the space that separates them.

Corabellen obeys, arranging her skirts over her legs and crossing her ankles and folding her hands with careful deliberation. When she's ready she meets her father's attentive gaze. She opens her mouth and her façade shatters.

"My daughter- Cordelia- Cordelia's _gone_!" she chokes out, starting to sob. "Please, father, you have to bring her back! Please. I need her…"

"Are you certain she's gone, my dear one?" Snow asks, ticking it over in his mind. If she really is, it can't have been for very long. He'd seen her out on the grounds just a few hours ago, playing with a litter of Persian kittens while her two pet Avoxes watched from a nearby table.

"Yes! Do you think I don't know my own daughter?" Corabellen insists, her voice rising.

"Don't be absurd. My dear one. I suggested nothing of the sort."

"That girl's not my daughter!" Corabellen shrieks, and then she hunches over and begins to cry in earnest, too deeply grieved to even try to talk any longer.

Snow watches her, his face now showing no more warmth than that of a gila monster. Could this be? How long? He himself last spoke to Cordelia eight days ago, when she'd joined him for breakfast. And Corabellen and her husband…

"Just getting in from another cocktail party, dear one?" he inquires, and Corabellen shudders and doesn't look up. "Or have you and Romulus been out shopping again?" Cordelia's parents may well have not been in the same room with her in the last week, either.

"_Daddy_," Corabellen wails. If there's a follow-up to that, Snow doesn't bother to wait for it. He's always privately detested that appellation.

Inside Cordelia's bedchamber, Camilia Rinn (the only name she will ever use in the city, even in the privacy of her thoughts) sits at the other girl's vanity and brushes her long, golden hair. The two Avox women are next door in the sitting room. Camilia supposes they're dead by now. The Red Man had given them nightlock capsules for this eventuality, the end game they all knew was coming on that day in the park. Somehow, she'd thought she'd last longer. Four days. It had felt more like four hours.

There had been no nightlock capsule for her. She doesn't know anything, not really. Just the date, and where it happened. That information she can give up at once. It's okay. They told her that's okay. And after she tells them the little she knows, they'll lock her up. And the Underground will rescue her as soon as they can. If they can. Camilia sets the brush down gently and regards her altered visage in the mirror, still new enough to be fascinating and kind of spooky. "Your extraction cannot be a priority," she tells herself again, proud of how steady she sounds now as things are crashing down all around her. "They'll come if they can. Either way, you're a hero of the Underground." She feels pride and excitement, and fear but that hardly matters. It would have been nice if the Avoxes could have stayed with her, but they would have tortured the Avoxes.

The door opens and Camilia rises to her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"Very clever," Snow says softly, looking her up and down. He's smiling, an amused little twist of his lips. _That's one on me, isn't it?_ the good-natured, almost kind eyes seem to say. "So who are you, little changeling?"

"My name is Camilia Rinn," she answers, returning a tentative smile of her own.

"Camilia Rinn." Snow treads slowly towards her. He stops close enough that she has to crane her neck to keep looking at him. "How long have you been here, _Camilia_?"

"Four days," Camilia replies, taking a deep breath. It's okay. Everything's going just how they said it would. Easy questions, easy answers. Then all that'll be left is the waiting.

Snow nods, seemingly unsurprised. "I have just one more question, dear. One more question, and then the guards will show you to your new quarters. You understand that you may no longer stay where you never belonged, don't you?"

"Yes. I know that."

"Good. So, one more question. The guards will no doubt have other questions, but this is the big one. Answer me truthfully and the remainder of your stay in my house need not be too onerous for you."

"I'll answer if I can," Camilia promises a little anxiously. "I don't know very much. They didn't tell me very much. They knew I'd be found out, so they didn't tell me anything important."

"Sit down, Camilia. You're shaking like a gray little creepmouse trapped outside its bolt-hole."

"Thank you." She sinks back down onto the velvet cushions. Her hands are shaking, but she can't do anything to stop them. She shudders, then realizes that her shoulders are shaking, too.

"Where is Cordelia?" Snow asks.

"I don't know. I really don't." Involuntarily, she begins to speak faster. "If you think about it for a minute you'll see I'm only telling you the truth. They never told me!"

Snow sighs very quietly, the sound a mere whisper in the charged air. "Unfortunately, I believe you. And you've no value as a hostage. They'd never have left you in such a hopeless position if you were of any importance to them." He'd known, of course, that she wouldn't know where Cordelia had been taken. And up close she really looks nothing like his granddaughter. Little blue-eyed blonde wearing Cordelia's dress. How could he have been tricked so easily?

"Stay here," he orders as he heads for the door. "The guards will come for you. Run, and I'll have them shoot you."

There'll be a ransom demand, of course. Why else would anyone take his eleven year old granddaughter? But who? Who would dare? He simply can't think of anyone; and that's the most troubling aspect of this whole mess, how completely unexpected this is. Who would (how would they) _dare_?

Well, it doesn't matter. He'll know who soon enough, because the girl knows. She'll remember all sorts of helpful little details. Smoothing his suit jacket and wrinkling his nose in a brief grimace of irritation, Snow resigns himself to returning to his office to await the results of the interrogation. He needs the calm of his gardens, that one sanctuary where everything falls into such neat and sensible patterns. But this is a matter of some urgency, and he'll have to wait where they can find him at once.

"Sir?" Another guard has approached him now.

"Too soon for results from the girl, surely?" Snow inquires, low and conversational and warning.

"The two Avoxes who had the care of Miss Snow, sir. Satin and Vernia. They've been found dead in Miss Snow's sitting room."

Snow stops abruptly, rendered still by this, frozen, ineffectual. Things slipping away, and he's moving too fast and too far above the ground. "Find out if they have living relatives," he orders shortly, speaking out of habit rather than thought.

Two dead servants: not such an important thing, not that big. But that doesn't hold, does it? Not paired with the theft of his granddaughter. He's the center of Panem; if he can no longer hold Panem together-

"Well? Go on," he snaps at the guard, only to realize the guard's already left and he is talking to himself like some doddering old fool.

Smoothing his jacket, Snow returns to his office. He sits down behind his huge mahogany desk and switches the sound back on in the world of District 12. At first he can't concentrate, and he drags his eyes back to the projection over and over. There, at least, all is as it should be. Haymitch Abernathy is dying, albeit with unnecessary slowness. Peeta Mellark is either huddling all on his own in Victor's Village or still watching the show from the Square. One could envy him his seat, for no doubt the spectacle is a gripping one for him. And Katniss Everdeen is right here in the Capitol, at long last exactly where Snow always intended her to be.

Corabellen is probably too old to give him another grandchild to replace Cordelia and continue the line. Even if she could at forty-two, the risk of the child growing up to be an imbecile is too high. He might possibly have to consider giving his dear Corabellen a little brother or sister. At his age. It's a ridiculous bother, to be sure. Much better if he could regain Cordelia, who after all favors him somewhat, is healthy and mentally sound, and in which so many resources have already been invested. Snow supposes he even loves Cordelia, if he understands the word correctly. But, if they kill her…

Well, such considerations can be postponed for the moment. His pragmatic mind often urges prematurely towards the worst possible outcome.

There is another tap at the door. Barely fifteen minutes have elapsed since he left Cordelia's rooms. Can she already have revealed something worth repeating?

Could she have killed herself, like the Avoxes?

Snow presses the button. A guard enters instead of an Avox. "Katniss Everdeen's handler has just reported her missing," the man announces. "She didn't respond to his summons when he went to collect her after her appointment. The desk clerk at the Lovely Baltic reports seeing her leave with Plutarch Heavensbee shortly after her arrival."

Cordelia gone. A strange little girl in her place: same age, same hair, same eyes, good enough to trick anyone as long as they didn't look too closely. Her maid and her nanny clearly complicit; both now dead before they could be interrogated.

Katniss Everdeen disappeared on her first night in the Capitol. Disappeared along with Plutarch Heavensbee, who had so wanted her first appointment that he'd requested it as a valuable favor from Snow.

With somewhat perverse satisfaction (for he despises no feeling so much as bewilderment and the attendant lack of control), Snow draws three sheets of his official stationary to himself and begins to write his orders in precise, unmistakable terms.


	70. Gathering

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: It is time for another break from posting. I will return with new chapters on August 18th, 2016 or as soon as I have the next twenty chapters ready, whichever comes first. As always, suggestions are welcome. Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, followed, faved, and paid my story the compliment of spending some of the numbered hours reading it. I think (hope) there's a long way to go yet. I'm maybe about a third of the way through writing what I've tentatively planned for this.

Note2: T-rating. Dark themes.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 70**

"Wake up." The voice is slow and distorted, not even a human voice. Haymitch's first semi-coherent thought is that it's the voice of his pain. The sky has opened up, and the only ones left in the world are him and the pain. Forever.

"No," Haymitch moans. A couple of tears track down his sunken cheeks into the sweat-matted scraggles of his beard, but he doesn't have the strength left to really cry. Just you and him. His eyes are half open, but he's gone blind in this last extremity. The only thing in front of him is whiteness, bright whiteness, litten whiteness, burning whiteness. White hell. His lips and mouth and throat and lungs crackle with wave after wave of pain. If he could only _stop_.

"Wake up." He's not sure if the other actually speaks again or if the command has just become part of the unending, inescapable loop, like the crackling waves of respiration.

A hand touches the bare skin of his arm, a cool hand that soothes the raw redness of lying under the burning sun for days and days. "Little brother, wake up."

Haymitch's eyes flicker. He blinks, then does it again even though it makes his dried-out eyes sting and burn. And the whiteness breaks up. Just like that. Still blinking, Haymitch rolls his eyes to the side to look up at the other.

"Chaff?" he whispers on an exhale.

Chaff smiles down at him, his familiar warm, always slightly amused smile. He nods in confirmation and winks at Haymitch. Then he opens his mouth.

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up."

It's even less human now, an unspeakable low pulsing sound, slow and perfectly rhythmic. The same sound, over and over, unvarying, already losing its meaning. Repetition.

"Stop it!" Haymitch barks in terror-colored rage. "I'll tear your throat out! Stop it, damn you! I'm dying, too! Damn the Peacekeepers!" He lurches up onto his knees, panting. "Do you think you're the only one who hates it here?"

The sound cuts off instantly, mid-word, like pushing the 'stop' button on a recording. Now there's only Chaff and Haymitch, the former sitting with his arm draped around one knee and his other leg stretched out in front of him, the latter crouching tensely, still panting, eyes wide and clear and sharp.

"You're dead," Haymitch asserts, telling himself because he's the only one here.

"That's true," Chaff says solemnly, though his dark eyes still hint at something teasing. He turns his face away so that Haymitch can see the back of his head. A shudder racks through Haymitch, like being doused with cold water. How many times had the girl done that? Water, half-finished glasses of liquor, once a pan of fucking _vomit_. Thrown up liquor, that had been; he doesn't think the girl knew it was vomit and he hadn't thought so even then when he'd stood before her with the slimy stuff dripping from his hair and tried to control the flash-fire fury before he backhanded her across the room or something. Hell of an ugly way to wake up.

He hadn't hit her, he marvels now, remembering. Back then he'd been something else to the dark-haired girl with the hard-bitten expression and the wary eyes. Haymitch looks through the gory mess of shattered skull and leaking brains and clotted blood that has replaced the back half of his best friend's head, and tries to remember just who the girl had been to him- and more importantly, who he'd once been to her.

"Is Katniss okay?" he asks the revenant.

"My head was bashed in." Chaff ignores his question. "It was one of the Peacekeepers. We had a strike in District 11 and things got ugly in the streets. Seeder and I went out after poor old Catchclaw." He touches the wet gray pulp of his crushed brain. "His name is Anders. I want you to kill him, Haymitch, if you can."

Haymitch nods. With an oath of this kind, it makes no difference that he's dying in a cage in the town square of District 12. Anders. One of the Peacekeepers in 11. He'll kill him, if he can.

Haymitch looks down at the desiccated shell he's so recently escaped. His body is a deep, painful-looking shade of red from the waist up. His eyes are slitted open, clear discharge forming a sticky crust in the corners and tufting his eyelashes together and, holy hell, that's more detail than he'd notice if this were only a dream, isn't it? His beard has grown out way more than it should have, a scraggly coarse-looking mess that reaches halfway down his throat. His belly has swollen grotesquely. The wound there, the wound that's (going to?) killed him, is weeping pus. There are flies buzzing around it. Before Haymitch has the sense to look away a metallic blue-green fly comes crawling _out_ of it.

Haymitch closes his eyes tightly. His body. Aw, fuck, his poor _body_. He'd been healthy, damn them. Even the liquor hadn't been able to touch him, not yet, not in any way he could notice.

He forces himself to look back into Chaff's calm, steady gaze. "Am I dead?"

"No." Chaff says. "Soon. You're almost out of this." He leans back against the bars in a casual, settling in posture. He'll stay, until they can leave together. Haymitch takes that realization in and copies Chaff's posture before raising his hand to toast his returned friend with an imaginary bottle. He freezes, flinching a little from the warm, solid press of the bars against his back. His hand and arm are bare; he's bare-chested just like his forsaken body, but his skin is unburned and unmarked.

"The roses are gone," he says to Chaff.

"You never thought of those embleer tattoos as part of you," Chaff says matter-of-factly, as if that explains everything. Haymitch supposes it does. This is all a construct of his dying brain, one last bright fever dream.

"Will it hurt, when I die? Does dying hurt?"

Chaff raises an eyebrow at the question and tips his chin toward the wrecked form Haymitch has temporarily vacated.

"I mean-" Haymitch doesn't know what he meant by the question. He's suffering horribly, just as they intended. Here in this moment he's unplugged from the body, and therefore from the pain. But it's still his body, and he owns it and the pain equally, now. He's unplugged but not disconnected. This is still happening, and he floats in an ocean of his dying body's pleas for help that will never be given: shelter from the merciless beating of the sun, some covering over the festering wound in his gut, the instinctive comfort of dim light and close walls, a cool touch…

Unquiet gray eyes settle on Chaff, longing, but the bedrock of stubborn pride persists even unto the end. It's as impossible to shed as his left-handedness. He can't even ask.

Between the two of them, there's no need to. Chaff reaches out and once more lays his one hand on his old friend's arm. But this time Haymitch is only aware of it, the way he's aware of the pain. Unplugged but not disconnected. The touch isn't soothing or comforting anymore; his whole form slumps and he bows his leonine head in an instant of almost crushing disappointment.

Chaff takes his hand back with a sigh, sharing Haymitch's disappointment as they so often shared the shitty parts of their lives. "Nothing good remains," he says resignedly. "The pain won't get any worse than it was right before you saw me. And at the very end, it will all go away."

Haymitch guesses he can deal with that, without letting himself really think about it. There's nothing left he can do. At least Chaff's here, until the hallucination breaks up.

"Why are you here?" he asks almost idly, aiming only to prolong the vision.

"You were howling," Chaff tells him. "Have been for almost a full day, now. Howling like a dog with its leg stuck in a trap." Chaff shivers a little, the smile dying from his lips and from his voice. "Actually, it was a lot like that, Mitch. Like a dog caught in a trap for a week with its leg rotted down to the bone on both sides of the steel jaws, starving and just hopeless. You've stopped now, but it was a cry to wake the dead. You brought them from the four corners of the wind."

"Hell's bells," Haymitch mutters lowly, feeling the old familiar shame flood through him. To look at it, you wouldn't have thought the fly-blown, sun-charred shell _could_ scream, but he guesses he managed. Gave them their goddamned show.

"Kill Thread for me, if you can," he gets out. It's not enough, it's nowhere near enough. They all deserve to die. But 'all' is too much for the oath to encompass.

"Can't do it," Chaff says laconically. "I'm dead, remember?" Impatient anger glints just beneath the surface, large and stealthy and dangerous. His stop-being-an-ass voice. Cut the shit, little brother.

"Yeah?" Haymitch hisses, glaring back. "Well, only you'd be bull-stupid enough to haunt a condemned criminal during his goddamned execution. If you want me to kill the prick who did you down, you're going to have to bring him to my cage and hold him _very… fucking… still_."

Chaff shrugs neutrally. "I have your oath."

"Yeah, you do," Haymitch affirms, defeated. "Is Peeta still out there?"

"Yes. He thinks you're dead, but the boy won't leave you until they take away the remains."

"Now that I've stopped wailing like a fucking kid," Haymitch says bitterly.

"No, Mitch. You didn't scream even once, not the whole time you've been in here. All that howling that brought the crowds in, that was more of a mental thing. Peeta probably got a knock of it, though, all the same. Him and everyone else in the Square. Be a lot of people with migraines in 12 today."

"Crowds?" Haymitch looks around, but they seem to be alone. A lot more of the world is available to him now, but it's a deserted world as far as he can see. It's full daylight, mid-morning or afternoon. Sitting here against the bars of his cage on its stupid little dais in the center of the Square (he's the star of the masquerade, didn't someone say that?) he commands a 360 degree view of what ought to be a populous part of town at this time of day. At the least, there should be Peacekeepers patrolling. There's no one at all. He scans the ground, turning easily for the moment. Peeta's not here. His subconscious, in the guise of Chaff, had really expected Peeta to stay. Hunching his shoulders, he clamps down on whatever it is he feels about that before it can fully register.

"You should have grown your beard out a little," Chaff says, apropos of nothing. "You'd have looked less scruffy, less like what they made you out to be."

Haymitch tosses a look down at his body, as thoughtless as a penny down a well, just something to do. He looks fucking awful with a beard. He realizes that he doesn't remember what he looks like clean-shaven. Fucking awful, most likely. "Sure. Then I could have been another Finnick. Finnick all grown up. Imagine it."

"Finnick would probably gain fifty pounds and shave his head bald if they'd let him, if it would help." Chaff looks off across the empty town square. "Frith, that poor kid."

"Yeah," Haymitch murmurs. "The Capitolites…" He shakes his head, wonderingly. "How have they gotten away with all of this for so long? How can that be?"

"You know what I think, little brother? People don't want change, not really. Not even the people in District 11, or 12. They aren't happy, but most of them are relatively safe. They're content."

"_They aren't_," Haymitch says harshly. That… that's not true. Not after all of this. Rabbits. So many rabbits, crouching warm and thoughtless in their hutches.

"Unhappily content." Chaff pauses, tasting the phrase. "They've got their routines. Everyone will seek the easier path, when they have a choice. Picture it: half a million narcissists all ambling down the same level path, just following the backs of whoever happens to be in front of them. Probably the ones in front know where they're going, and it must be the best path for so many to be walking it. And the few rams among the sheep, the Peacekeepers mark them and get rid of them. Easy. So it goes, until one day one of the rams is accidentally lifted to prominence by their own Games. Irony enough for all of us." And he gives his exquisitely ironic laugh, the one that always makes Haymitch think of bar fights or explosions even while he laughs along. If ever a man lived who could laugh anarchy, it was Chaff.

Laughing, Haymitch leans back against the bars, pretty damn near delighted with the metaphor. "Katniss with _horns_! Great! That's just great."

"Not Katniss. You," Chaff corrects him, with a vaguely defiant shrug. Go figure.

"Well, at least that sets the gender right," Haymitch allows grimly. He misses Alive Chaff. Alive Chaff wouldn't bullshit him like this. Though it's hard to credit even his fucked up subconscious with _that_ gem.

"Katniss is a different animal altogether," Chaff continues. "Plutarch and Company call her the Mockingjay, in private."

Mockingjay. Their creation, turned back upon the creators. Haymitch lets the implications of that come as they will, not searching or reaching out for them. He doesn't have to. If he'd had that one word, he'd have known all the rest: the shape of their whole plan for Katniss. She's going to be the centerpiece of their propaganda campaign. Essentially powerless, probably, but they'll tell the world that's who they are. Katniss Everdeen, the dark horse, going after the Capitol with nothing but a bow, a quiver, and pure grit. And triumphing, knocking them down, making them all look like fools.

It's fucking brilliant. Exploitative as ever you'd like, exploitative as any revolutionaries have to be. But Katniss has handed them the psychological weapon that might just prove critical. And he'd had a part in that.

"They shouldn't call her that," he says, angry and afraid for her and wound so tightly that his shoulders ache with the need to do something, and proud, isn't that a fucking trip, nice, though. "Not even in private. Not until they get her out of Snow's reach. If he heard…"

"There are a lot of things they shouldn't do," Chaff says, shrugging. "But, then, they're a government."

Haymitch nods slowly. Life is a wheel. "Is she alright?" he asks again.

"Ask me yourself, you craven," Katniss hisses.

She's standing outside his cage, behind the rope barrier, Peeta next to her. She's naked, her dark hair loose and in disarray. Her breasts point perkily at him, her nipples jutting from areolas of dusky rose. There are tear tracks running down her pale cheeks, but her eyes hold nothing but hatred. They've shaved her down there, so she's as hairless as the kid she almost is. Her fingernails and toenails are painted a rich dark purple. There's blood on the inside of her thighs, just a little.

Peeta is naked, too. "You let this happen to us because some guy slapped you," he says in a soft voice that somehow reverberates around the Square. His tone is light and thoughtful and does nothing at all to mask his bone-deep hurt. "Katniss saw you better than I. She told me you were just a selfish drunkard, weak and cowardly and not really even very bright. I… I just wanted to believe you were more. I just wanted to save Katniss."

"All for nothing, lad," Fash says, coal blackened and with sludgy blood oozing slowly from half a dozen crushed places. "Did you enjoy it, at least?"

The crowds have come to see him off. Dozens and dozens of them jostle for places around the barrier, each wanting to get a good look at the killer who's finally dying as badly as any of them. Some of the younger Tributes are crying, crying just like they were the last time he saw them. Poor maddened Chars is screaming, still screaming in his cracked voice. Glenna holds her brother against her, rocking him too quickly, singing-chanting-rapping a sooth song at him.

"Don't mind them," Chaff says calmly, a distant buzzing overlaying his words.

Haymitch shakes his head quickly. "I didn't kill Fash, did I?" Fash had died in the mines, more than three years after Haymitch's Games. But… it could have been an arranged accident, punishment for something Haymitch had done or some drunken remark he'd made while the cameras were rolling.

Fash's only son and two of his daughters had died in the first couple of years after his death, of illness and malnutrition. They'd stomped out the Abernathy name in that section of District 12, except for Haymitch himself. Exterminated the whole family like an infestation, or like diseased livestock.

Some of the Tributes and he thinks… Maysilee's father have ducked under or climbed over the rope barrier. Even if these wraiths are as solid as Chaff seems to be, there's little enough they can do to him at this point.

"Don't mind them," Chaff drones.

They're not there, any of them, and it isn't the first time he's seen any of them since their deaths, either. But… but he _wishes_ they'd go away. Chaff, too. This buzzing, droning Chaff, Chaff speaking to him in the voice of the flies that are putting their hateful spawn in his body and eating him alive. Eating him in tiny bites, hideous and mad, ghouls with no brains and a hundred eyes. Each takes its infinitesimal bites, skin and muscle breaking down into red pulp in a radius around clusters of writhing white bodies. Too slow. The infection will kill him. It has to. If it weren't for the infection, this could take weeks.

The first person he ever killed, still seventeen and still dressed for the Arena, reaches through the bars and thumbs one of Haymitch's eyes all the way open. Haymitch sees his head jerk back a little, maybe an inch. The Career follows it with his hand, pulling the eyelid up again. Haymitch feels his body try to pull back again and fail. His features tighten as the focus of the all-over pain shifts to his eyes. Holding the reddened, crusted eye open, the Career rubs the pad of his thumb across the surface.

The pain is still disconnected, but Haymitch is aware of how it sharpens and clarifies. Worse, his sight on the right side blurs over, becomes fuzzy movement and shapes in a gray-white fog.

"Don't mind them."

"Go to hell," Haymitch growls. "The whole fucking lot of you. Back off, Two," he warns, turning to face the most immediate threat. "I'm bigger than I was then, bigger than you, now, _kid_. So back away."

"You're old," Two says with the cold self-assuredness of someone who has trained their whole life for this confrontation. Surprise is the only thing Haymitch will see on his face when the knife finds its place between two of his ribs. There won't be anger or condemnation, or even the pleading fear he's become so used to seeing as the eldritch years of his life play out like some interminable gory snuff film, one where the director could finally contain his prurient excitement no longer and added a couple of years of porn before coming back to the final death scene. Of course, Haymitch won't have time to really _look_, not with this first kill.

"Come and get it, Twelve," Two beckons, smiling in anticipation.

Chaff takes his wrist. "Leave it," he advises. "All of your solidity is down there," and he nods toward the body. Then Chaff's head snaps to the side, and he looks out over the crowd of ghosts with sharp, hard eyes. "Oh fuck. They're coming." His head swivels back and Haymitch catches his sorrow, sudden and overwhelming. "I'm sorry, little brother. I really thought you were going to die."

"I'm not?" Haymitch asks, and the thought makes him feel sick.

"Not yet. The fuckers."

Haymitch shakes his head in denial. The ghosts have disappeared as quickly and soundlessly as they came. It's a bright, sunny day in the Town Square of District 12, morning or early afternoon, warm-going-on-hot. Scattered citizens go briskly about their business, adults trying not to look at the remains of the Victor and kiddies gaping. A Peacekeeper stands nearby, on the off chance some one of these citizens needs to be dissuaded from slipping the prisoner some sleep syrup or some morphia, or maybe even poison. And on the roof of the Justice Building a hovercraft is settling down in a landing. Even the kiddies turn their attention to this new spectacle before their parents grab their hands and hurry them into the nearest shop.

Haymitch looks up at the hovercraft out of his one good eye. His right eye is still just shapes moving in fog and on that side he sees a huge black carrion fly land on top of the building, and it's like seeing what _is_.

"Kill me," he implores Chaff, the only one who hasn't yet left. He wants to live, yeah, he can't help that. But that's only blind instinct, the old lizard brain. He sees a little of what's coming, and no part of his mind wants to stay around for this.

"Okay. Breathe with me. In… out." Chaff breathes a slow, deep rhythm that steadily increases. His fingers drum a rapid, uneven tattoo on the burning steel floor of the cage.

Haymitch tries to breathe with Chaff. All at once breathing hurts again, worse than before, like the air is full of broken glass. Without moving Chaff shoves him away and Haymitch falls onto his side. He's gasping, choking, warm liquid running out of his mouth. Thick white fog surrounds him in a hot, abrasive cloud. He can feel his heart slamming against the walls of his chest, trying to break through. _Stop_, he thinks.

A familiar voice whispers to him one final time. "They're too close. You're fighting it. They're too close. I'm sorry." Then Chaff is gone, too.

"S'okay," Haymitch gasps. He knows too well about not being able to save the Other. They always let you think you might, and it gives you that flicker of hope that keeps you enslaved to them. But then they're always… well, just too goddamn close, aren't they? Even the dead are still dragged into their game.

The Capitol always wins.


	71. Survival

A Note and a Request: There will be new chapters at least once a week through the end of 2016. That's the plan, anyway. I'm still only about a third of the way through, as far as I can tell. The 'petty nonsense, disappointments, and humiliations' of life have made the writing since I last posted slower than it has ever been before. I know where it should go, but I find myself starting a chapter in three or four different directions and then finding that none of them have any spark. The world is too much with me. Hopefully things will get better, as far as writing. I care about this too much to ever intentionally post anything I think is subpar, but with the way things have been this summer I worry about my judgment sometimes. So, if any of you notice that the quality is deteriorating week to week, please let me know. As ever, suggestions are welcome.

Note2: If I do this part right, it will be darker than what's come before. I'll post warnings where appropriate, but there's very little light in the near future.

Note3: Thanks for the reviews, Dash11! Things for each of them are going to get worse still before they get even marginally better. As for scaphism, try Rob Dyke's 'Most Brutal Executions' vid on Youtube. It's useful to occasionally remind oneself what sick twisted fucks people can be.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 71**

Standing straight and ominously still behind the technician's chair, President Snow regards the glowing computer screen. A ghostly bluish-white outline of a man slowly moves across the monitor. Head to foot, about three minutes of silence in between. Then the technician huffs out a loud exhalation that broadcasts his anxiety as clear as any cringe or worsening tremor could have. Snow recognizes it as the sound small men tend to make before they tell him something they think he won't want to hear. It's one of the thousand sounds of fear. He waits, curling his hands into fists in the certainty that the small man won't dare turn around.

Instead of speaking the technician reverses the scan, moving up from the feet this time. Snow waits.

Haymitch lies in a narrow trough as the ring moves up and down his body, surrounding him. He's fully restrained, just in case. Near complete stillness is essential to the scan, and Victors Hospital in well-equipped for patients that need help holding still. There are straps over his ankles, just above and below his knees, across his upper chest, above and below each elbow. There's even a head cradle with padded grips at the temples and straps to hold the jaw closed. All of these had been duly applied to Haymitch when he responded to the pin test and was designated 'unconscious/responsive to pain' rather than 'unresponsive' or 'comatose'.

Nearby, a remote sensor array keeps track of his vitals: temperature 107, pulse 124, respiration 11, blood pressure 90/40.

The technician leans forward in his swivel chair, watching the screen intently. When the image finally works back up to Haymitch's abdomen he taps a button and pauses it there. Through the glass, Haymitch's unclothed midsection looks quite grotesque. It's swollen in a macabre parody of pregnancy. The skin has burst open in long lines like tiger stripes. These wounds ooze constantly with a light pink watery fluid that coats him and seeps into the absorbent covering he's lying on. The gunshot wound in his right side has grown rather than closing, a great ragged hole where dark things can be seen moving down deep. It doesn't seem to be bleeding. High up on his chest the swelling subsides abruptly, and there his ribs limn the sun-charred skin.

It's neater on the scan. On the scan the wound is outlined in an almost understated red nimbus and kelly-green dots form moving clumps and lines and galaxies of individual pinpricks.

"All of the green dots are insects. The clumps and the lines suggest areas where larvae and eggs are concentrated, respectively."

"I see," Snow says ruminatively. It would have been a fitting death for Haymitch. "Is he in pain?"

"Right now? Oh yes. Certainly. There's a lot of twitching, spikes in respiration and heart rate that hold for a short period and then fall back, some vocalization. Yes, certainly. Not as much as if he were conscious, of course…"

Snow nods, satisfied with the answer. "How long would he survive, untreated?"

The technician swallows nervously. "It's really impossible to say, sir."

"Impossible to say."

"Survival at this level, when the wounds are mortal and it's down to whatever reserves of strength the subject had prior to the injury, varies greatly. Not long. He _is_ dying." Snow waits. "No more than two or three days," the technician offers unwillingly. "Maybe less."

"And if he were stressed during those… two or three days," Snow lays a sardonic emphasis on the words that clearly tells the technician it was a mistake to speak them, "I'd imagine he would die more quickly, wouldn't he?"

"Stressed? Yes, I'd imagine he would." Snow sees the technician wince at his choice of words. So few men in the world. Dismissing the peon for the moment, he ticks this over in his mind.

Perhaps a day, then, if the interrogators were careful. Not that they'd be apt to get much sense from Haymitch while he was running a fever of 107 anyway. And does Haymitch have secrets to tell him? Secrets that he doesn't already know? Plutarch's gone, along with seven of the Victors: Katniss, Finnick Odair, Annie Cresta, Beetee Lantier, Wiress Plummer, Yohan Fairbain, Ivette Li Sanchez. Six other Capitolites have been confirmed missing now, but it's unclear if they went with the turncoat Heavensbee willingly or were taken along as hostages for some as yet unclear reason. Some of them may simply be murdered.

He has Euphemia Trinket in custody, and Peeta. But it's quite possible that Haymitch was privy to things neither of them were trusted with. He might have been part of this for years. Really, Haymitch's part in this treason could have begun twenty-five years ago, two years ago, or any time in between. And if it's closer to the former, he might know all _sorts_ of useful things.

There's nothing to be lost by holding onto him for the time being, if possible. There might turn out to be more than one way he can be of service in what's to come. "Can he be saved?" Snow asks in his blandest voice, not wanting to scare the peon into an overly optimistic answer.

The tone or the question or both have a vivifying effect on the technician. "Yes!" he says eagerly. "Almost certainly! It will need surgery to clean out all the insects, antibiotics, force-healing for the muscles, skin patches, some patching on the stomach and intestines and liver." He taps various spots on the screen as he speaks, a subdued excitement evident in his voice. "We might need to replace the stomach and portions of the intestines with synths. Have to see about that in surgery. We could go ahead and replace the liver too, while we're in there…"

Snow couldn't care less what this idiot wants to do with Haymitch's liver. Techies like to fix things and improve things, and he's found it's generally good policy to give them their heads and let them find whatever path works for them, so long as they end up where they should. "How long before he'll be stable enough to forego medical supervision?"

"Two weeks. If he's kept quiet and calm for the duration, he should be able to be up and about by then."

"Fine. Do it," Snow says decisively. It's a frustrating delay, but at least he has Trinket and Mellark to question in the meantime. And if the wait turns out to be for naught, if Haymitch can't tell him anything useful, he'll have him dismembered. As slowly as possible. Send each piece to District 13. Gifts for the Mockingjay.


	72. Head Game

Note: Thanks for the follow, DaisyRain01!

Note2: Thanks for the review, guest! Thanks for taking the time. I'm sorry to have disappointed you. I know I've been saying I'm roughly a third of the way through for quite a while now. If it helps, I consider chapter 71 to be the start of Part Two (of three). But parts two and three are meant to be around the same length as part one, if I can manage it. So, no, there isn't any resolution in sight. I've been writing this story for over two years now, and I always intended it to be novel-length. As to climax, I'll try to add twists and surprises throughout. There will eventually be a climax of the sort you're looking for, something that changes everything, like Katniss shooting Coin (not that, obviously). But not in the near future. The other thing I got from your review is that not enough happens in each chapter, that the story is moving too slowly. Based on that, I looked over chapter 72 and decided to combine it with what would have been chapter 73. Longer, and more happens. Hope you like!

**Capitol Nights, chapter 72**

Everything is hazy. That's Haymitch's only impression, at first. Nothing is quite in focus, and he's having serious problems making sense of any of this. He can't move very much, but that fact doesn't seem any more important than any of the other confused input that his senses are able to pick up.

There's a nasty taste on his tongue, nasty but somehow interesting, and almost before he's aware of it the taste is gone as he swallows. There's someone else here with him; he hears them talking and sees them move every now and then. No one he knows. Who does he know, anyway? If there were friends or family members or acquaintances, he can't recall them to his mind. It's too hard to think. His arms and his legs feel disconnected- not painful, just a little bit out of his reach.

That taste again for a second, then swallowed down.

Haymitch rolls his head to the side and groans as the movement sets off kaleidoscope patterns of light and color. He closes his eyes, but the spinning images don't go away. Maybe his eyes were closed before, and he opened them instead? He opens his eyes and the images only go round faster. He's getting dizzy.

That taste again, and this time he's ready for it. He spits it out, spits again.

The someone else is speaking, meaningless run-together mumbling that fades in and out like everything else is starting to do. There's pressure on both sides of his jaw, then the taste again only worse, more slimy. He gags and tries to expel it again, but there's a weird pressure at his throat now and he can't open his mouth anymore than he can lift either of his arms. Several seconds pass, almost half a minute, before Haymitch swallows with a hard gulp.

Immediately there's more, and he swallows that, too.

That taste becomes his sole focus. If he could make it go away and stay away, he'd be able to bring the pieces of this puzzle together. He'd start to understand. It's all he can think of. It comes again and again. When it's not there all he can do is anticipate it. Time to time he gags and tries to spit it out. He can't. Right away or in five seconds or in twenty, it always slides down his throat and he begins to anticipate the next time.

Less than a minute after the cycle finally stops Haymitch slips back into a deep, unknowing sleep. There are tears of frustration tracking down his freshly shaven cheeks.

141414

He surfaces too quickly, swimming up into consciousness like a diver fleeing a shark. And the first fully sharp and bright thing to come back is the agony in his belly. He utters a harsh cry that's part scream and part sob and tries to roll onto his side. He's almost pure instinct in those first waking moments; something has gored him, torn his vitals apart and left his flesh gaping open, and lying flat on his back is terrifying.

He continues to jerk and cry for a while, until he comes back from whatever in-between place he'd been and realizes where he is now. He's strapped down: chest, wrists, thighs, ankles. Haymitch stares at the ceiling and tries to take deep breaths. He doesn't want to pitch a fit. That would be bad. But, fuck, he hates being strapped down.

When he thinks he's got it controlled, for now, he lifts his head to see as much of himself as he can. He immediately drops his head back with a thump that hurts in spite of the thin pillow. "Fuck, no, this isn't real, it's only a dream, wake up wake up wake up." Then he lies very still and silent for nearly twenty minutes. Only when he's exhausted the last shred of hope that this is only a nightmare does he feel the need to take another look.

He's naked. From his hips to his lower ribs everything is covered in bright white bandages. Two tubes run out of the bandaged area, one about pencil width and one that looks as thick as a hose. The thick one comes out of him just about where Danby shot him and goes to a quietly humming machine beside his bed. The thin one is lower, just above his right hip. It goes to a bag clipped to the side of the bed. There are IVs in both his forearms, wires taped to his chest and his sides, a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his right bicep, and a tube coming out of his penis and going to another bag on the side of the bed.

The pitch of the tube machine suddenly changes, becomes louder and higher, like it's cycling up from sleep mode. "Fucking hell!" Haymitch gasps, uselessly trying to roll over again. Suction, he guesses. It feels indescribable, like having his guts pulled out through the open wound. He feels the bile rising in his throat but he can't move enough to throw up over the side of the bed. He retches onto the pillow and tastes blood. And still it's pulling at him.

He has no way of knowing how long it lasts. When it stops he feels tears on his cheeks and understands he must have cried at some point. The pillow under his cheek is wet and slimy-feeling.

A tech enters the room carrying a pad and a stylus. He looks at the monitors and makes some notes, looks at the tube machine and makes some more notes. Haymitch tenses when the man reaches out towards the buttons on the tube machine's panel, and the tech catches the movement and finally looks at him.

"Well! You're awake, aren't you?"

"Well, that or this is one fuck of a vivid nightmare," Haymitch growls. He curls his hands into fists against the sheets.

"You're not supposed to be awake. I bet you'd like to go back to sleep, wouldn't you?"

"What the hell _happened_?" He'd been in the Square… But all that had been a long time ago, hadn't it?

"Sweet dreams," the nurse replies, injecting the contents of a syringe into one of the IVs.

It all goes away again, at least for a while.

141414

"Wake up, Haymitch. You have visitors."

Blearily Haymitch opens his eyes. The sunlight is glaring directly into his face and his eyes itch and burn with it. They want to slip closed again and he gives up quickly on the affair. He's tired and he can't move and something is very weird about all this, something's missing, if he could only remember what it is.

"Now, now," the medic tuts. "Wake up, I say!"

Someone thumbs his right eye open and Haymitch jerks his head away, only to have his chin seized and held tightly. His eye is forced open again and a liquid is dropped into it before the eyelid is released. It stings sharply for a few seconds, but they won't let him move his head and his wrists are strapped down. Efficiently they do the same thing to his other eye and then finally let go of him. Blinking hard, Haymitch rests his head against a soft surface and draws in a slow breath. How many goddamned times have they had him trussed up like this? he wonders. How many days (weeks) of his life has he spent unable to move because of their psychotic need to be _in control_?

Straps mean he's in Victors Hospital. And now he remembers seeing the hovercraft land on the roof of the Justice Building, flashing sun-dazzles like some malevolent god descending for a close-up view of the final hellfire. They took him from District 12, from what was supposed to be his execution. What the fuck happened?

"Come on, sunshine. Let's see those pretty eyes," the medic coaxes in an easy, joking tone. And then something sharp pricks his left palm. Haymitch opens his eyes, wincing but not making a sound. His palm stings. Whatever the hell that was, it wasn't just a quick jab with a pin. Bee sting?

Holy fucking hell, are the bugs still on him? Still _in_ him?

"_Get them off_," he says, the words scratching at his dry throat and making him cough. "_Please_." He opens and closes his stung hand rapidly, trying to dislodge the insect. He can't feel it there anymore, but he keeps running his fingertips over his palm anyway. They're all still there. He's in Victors Hospital, but he's still full of insects, still being eaten from the inside out. Why? Fuck's sake, _why_?

So the Capitolites can have their turn gawking. So they can get a nice close look at his slow death. He's going to have to die strapped down on his back, naked, in Victors Hospital, while they, the _johns_, gloat over him. They might touch him. At least before he's always been able to move when they touched him.

Get a goddamn grip. You're fucking dying. The fuck does it matter if they _touch_ you?

They could drag this out indefinitely here. Antibiotics, IVs, the works. How's that for something to think about?

His side still throbs, a deep, rotten-tooth sort of pain, but he thinks its let up a little. Probably the deeper the mass of insects burrows into him the less it will hurt. Most of the nerve endings are in the skin, right? Do internal organs even have pain receptors?

His eyes feel better, anyway. All watery from the drops, but not itching and stinging anymore. There are people standing at the side of his bed. This will be the first merry tour group, then. Maybe later they'll start filtering elementary school classes through their new exhibit. Haymitch suddenly wonders if there's an admission fee. "Gonna sleep now," he says to his audience, closing his eyes again. "Eat your hearts out, all you beautiful people."

Then there's the sting again, in what feels like the exact same place as the last time. Haymitch growls and opens his eyes again, noticing that they've regained the ability to focus, albeit a lot more slowly than they used to. "Fuck you-" Another sting, and he swears so he won't say something like 'stop' or 'please' (again). "Shit! Fuck you and-"

"Stupid brute, isn't he?" the medic interrupts.

"Even boars and billy-goats catch on eventually," another of his 'visitors' replies. "Sting him again."

"I'm awake, goddamn it!" Haymitch barks, closing his left hand into a fist as though that will somehow protect it. He can't help doing that. Opening his eyes he finds and focuses on the one he guesses is the leader, or at least the most vocal of the group. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," he says deliberately.

"Such language," the man says, easy and joking still. At no point during this had the fucker sounded the least bit perturbed. He's dressed in the too-familiar white uniform with the logo of Victors Hospital on the left breast, a big V with an H inside it and the silhouettes of a man and woman on either side, facing away from each other and standing on an uneven sloped shape meant to be a boulder. The one next to him is also identifiable by uniform: one of the Capitol Guard, red and white like blood and bone.

The third person standing by his bed is Prim, and she's holding Rue in her arms. Prim has her eyes deliberately fixed on the infant, swaying from side to side and bouncing a little on her feet in an attempt to keep her quiet. Prim's hair, usually so neatly braided, hangs in wild waves over her shoulders and partially obscures her downturned face.

"Tell Haymitch why you're here," the guard prompts her.

"The President-" Prim begins in a muffled voice, bouncing the baby in her arms. The guard suddenly grabs a handful of her hair and yanks her head sharply back. Prim cries out, her arms reflexively tightening around Rue. Rue shrieks and then begins to wail.

"Shut that brat up or I will," the guard menaces her.

Prim hugs the baby protectively to her chest, partially stifling her cries. Rue kicks and struggles against her as the teenager anxiously holds on.

"Look at Haymitch when you speak to him, girl," the guard commands. "You're in the Capitol now, and you'll act civilized."

Prim meets Haymitch's gray eyes, careful not to look any lower. She's seen more than her share of naked men, of course, had even briefly seen Haymitch naked after Thread whipped him. But she's fourteen, and she's terrified, and looking at his nakedness right now would shatter her control as quickly as looking at the grisly infected wound in his side would once have shattered Katniss's.

"S'okay, Prim," Haymitch says quietly. The humiliation is all too deliberate, of course. Probably more for her benefit than his. They mean to frighten her, to keep her in a state of low-grade terror.

Never mind that the girl's _fourteen_, for fuck's sake.

He'd come so close to being out of this.

"Don't worry about it. It's just a stupid, unimaginative, really, really _unsubtle_ head-game. Just- go on and say whatever you're supposed to say." And he's such a shit, he really is, because all he can think is, _at least it isn't Katniss_.

Prim maneuvers the baby so she can free a hand for a moment and tucks her long hair behind her ear. Unflinchingly she meets his eyes as he takes in the bruises marring her elfin features, her reddish-black slitted eye and the dried blood on her lips.

"Hell," Haymitch mutters quietly. Just another head-game: her bruises, his nakedness. "Good one, guys," he sneers at the guard and the medic and whoever else he's trapped in this room with. "Very moving. Her. Me. I'd applaud, but-". He shrugs his left shoulder. "What do you want? I think I missed that part."

"Katniss escaped," Prim says suddenly. "_She escaped_. Don't-"

The guard grabs her by the hair again. "Give me the shocker," he says furiously.

Closing her eyes tightly, Prim hugs Rue to her. In spite of herself, tears overspill her eyelids and track down her unnaturally pale cheeks. The guard presses the palm-sized device that had been used to gain Haymitch's attention against her bared throat.

"If you weren't holding the brat I'd make you scream, girl," the guard murmurs in her ear. Then he lets go of her and hands the shocker back to the medic. "Maybe later." He shoves her against the side of the bed. "Now, tell him why you're here. Without any further embellishments."

"Katniss has committed an act of treason against Panem," Prim recites dully. "Under questioning she has already implicated several of her co-conspirators. You, Peeta Mellark. He's in custody, too. Along with," she pauses, takes a deep breath, "Elsabet Everdeen, Rowena Mellark, Ryker Mellark, Rye Mellark, Crescen Mellark, Wiress Plummer, Beetee Lantier, Yohan Fairbain, Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Ron Stafford, Mags Cohen. And me."

Both the kids' families. And all the living Victors from 3 and 4. So Wiress and Beetee were in on this. He should have guessed that. The mite would have been theirs, of course. But Mags? Yeah, if Finnick knew she probably knew. But still- they have Mags here somewhere? And what the hell do they think they're going to get from poor, disturbed Annie Cresta? His mind skims over these names, just filing them away for now, avoiding the myriad side roads almost every one of the names wants to drag him down.

They don't have Katniss, in spite of that recitation. Damn brave of Prim to tell him that. Wouldn't have thought it of her. He wonders if anything he can do with that information is possibly worth what they'll do to _her_.

Plutarch apparently escaped, too. Katniss couldn't have gotten out on her own. But how'd he get her to leave Peeta and Rue and her sister?

Can they really have Peeta?

Better one lives than neither.

But, damn it (damn _her_), how could she have left Peeta?

"Alright, let's go. He's all yours," the guard says, putting a large hand on the back of Prim's neck and pushing her towards the door.

"You be good and maybe you'll get to see them again later," the medic says, mock-scoldingly. "Today's a very big day for you, Haymitch. This is the first time you've been fully lucid since you came to us thirteen days ago. If you can behave yourself, we're going to see about getting you up. Let you walk around a little."

"Joy," Haymitch mutters, rolling his eyes. "Why aren't I in a cell?" He can't think about Peeta while he's strapped down like this. If he can't move soon he's going to pitch a fit. Not all bad, though. Least then they'll sedate him. And, just by the way, why isn't he sick as hell, puking his guts up and shivering and hallucinating every fucked up thing that the drink usually keeps confined to his nightmares? He can't have been in the cage long enough to have detoxed. Unless the shock did something to his brain. Now that he's thinking about it he wants a drink, but it's bearable for the moment; preoccupation rather than desperation.

Holy fucking hell. _Effie_. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Okay. Okay, _think_, damn it. Prim didn't say her name. If they had her, he definitely would have been told. So they don't have her. Yet. Did she escape with Katniss and Plutarch? Or was she left behind, like- hell, like _everyone else_, he thinks with the first bitter spike of hatred for Plutarch. How important is Effie to the Underground? Hard to believe she'd be more valuable to them than Wiress or Beetee or Finnick. But she'd have been in the Capitol, much more accessible than they would have been.

There's just no way to know.

"You've got a hole in your side," the medic says cheerily. And by way of illustration he taps Haymitch's abdomen with his stylus.

"Fuck," Haymitch hisses, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his fists against the sheets and just trying not to throw up.

"Hurt a little?" the medic asks rhetorically. "You're also septic. And not all of the synths are taking yet. But we're going to get you all fixed up. Another three or four days and you should be well enough-" His voice abruptly breaks off, and for just a second there's discomfort in the look he fixes on his patient. He almost looks... guilty and disturbed. Then he gives an embarrassed little laugh. "Well, you're really doing so much better!"

It's as good as a shrug and a smile. Haymitch thinks it looks worlds better than that there-and-gone expression of a few seconds ago. It's just much more in line with reality as he understands it.


	73. Control

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review, Dash11! Welcome back.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 73**

The cell door opens and Haymitch startles violently before shoving himself up against the wall. He guesses he must have been dozing. Either that or semi-conscious. He wants a drink, needs a drink. The certainty that he isn't going to get it makes him feel panicky. He wants to beg, and it's an effort of will to keep his mouth shut. There's a percussion in his skull, constant and low, for now just a malignant reminder of what's to come. When he makes himself concentrate he figures out it must have been a dozen hours or so since his last drink, maybe a little longer, based on the level of the headache and the absence of any other symptoms so far.

His side still hurts badly, especially when he presses down on it. But the wound is closed up and the swelling is completely gone. How long would that have taken? Even with the high-tech treatments the Capitolites have, that wouldn't have been quick. A week? Longer?

The only possible explanation is they were dosing him with alcohol the whole time he was in there, portioning it out in carefully measured increments, preventing withdrawal. He guesses withdrawal would have probably finished him off, and of course they weren't going to allow that to happen. They have an injectable form of alcohol for certain patients at Victors Hospital. He knows he was on that shit the last time he was there. But now that he's apparently once again _not dying_, are they going to keep giving it to him? Given his radically changed status, why would they? How long has it been since they moved him into this cell- since the last dose? Fuck, he's going to go into full-on withdrawal in this tiny, cold, windowless room. It's going to be sheer hell.

The guards step through the door, a pair of them. First time they've come in since they put him in here. Not taking his eyes off them, Haymitch drags his feet under him and works his way up the wall until he's standing, facing them on their level, staring them down.

"No need to get up," one of them says, smiling complacently at him.

"Sit down, boy, before you hurt yourself," the other adds, stepping forward. His fingers tap casually at the handle of his club, a shorter, thicker version of the batons the Peacekeepers back home carry.

"Yeah, I guess I should. Before I hurt myself. Or before you decide to show us all how much stronger you are, with your damn club." Haymitch chuckles darkly. "Why don't you just let go of your little security blanket and come over here?"

"I ought to do just that," the second guard says with a tight smile. He takes another step forward but stays well out of reach. Haymitch narrows his eyes, honing his focus to a knife edge. He's bluffing, he's got nothing, there's not a chance in hell he could take this man down at the moment. But he'll damn sure give the fucker something to think about. He guesses he can still do that much.

"Just a cornered animal, Absom," the first guard says, raising a hand in a wordless gesture of restraint. "A cornered, injured animal. There'd be no satisfaction in knocking him down. He's barely standing as it is." He gives Haymitch a look oozing with counterfeit pity. "Go on, fella, sit. We're not going to hurt you."

"Not this time, anyway," Absom puts in.

"Actually, we brought your medicine." He reaches into his pocket and produces a plastic case. Snapping it open, he picks out four pills. "Antibiotics. You be good and swallow them, and you'll get this." He plucks a syringe from another pocket and waves it teasingly. "You want this, don't you?"

Haymitch shrugs one shoulder, not trusting himself to speak.

"Come get your medicine," the first guard says, his smile becoming openly cruel.

Clenching his fists, Haymitch cautiously pushes away from the support of the wall at his back. His bare feet want to curl away from the concrete under them. Cold always seems to make them cramp up. _You're used to this_, he tells himself silently, furiously. Furious because he can still remember vividly when walking didn't hurt like this. _Come the fuck on_. Of course, his feet aren't the real issue. The pain in his side has quadrupled since he got up here. It wants to double him over. He keeps checking the new red scars that stand out against his pale flesh, making sure they aren't pulling apart again.

Both guards watch, assessing as the prisoner takes the ten halting steps across the floor. It's obvious from the start that there are no teeth behind the aggressive stare and the goading taunts. He's shivering, his features drawn tight. His left hand moves up and clamps over the uppermost of the scars only to pull away at once. He lowers the hand back to his side, but it goes down a little at a time, as though he doesn't quite have control over it. It's clear he has to keep resisting the impulse to bring it back to his side.

"Sit," the first guard commands again as soon as the prisoner reaches them. He reaches out and clasps a steadying hand on Haymitch's upper arm.

"G-Give me the damn pills," Haymitch growls, hearing the tremor in his voice. Just at the moment he really doesn't give a fuck about that.

"Are you going to throw up?" the guard asks, not relinquishing the pills. "You'd best tell us now if you're going to."

"Not going to throw up," Haymitch growls impatiently. Standing still is better. He straightens up a little, tries to find that elusive equilibrium. Of course, he can't. Equilibrium is in the syringe.

"If you throw up these pills you get the suppository version."

"Hell's bells." Haymitch rolls his eyes and tosses his head out of long-ingrained habit, only remembering at that moment that he no longer has hair to get in his eyes. He guesses they got tired of cleaning it at some point and sheered most of it off. So at least there's that. But this all seems like a ludicrously high price to pay to finally be allowed to get rid of that damn irritating mane. He notes the guards quick glances at each other in response to his sudden amused look and deliberately holds on to the expression, although the ability to feel anything like levity at this situation had lasted barely a second.

"Doesn't look like he'd mind that so much," Absom ventures.

"No, by all means let's keep this on a PG level," Haymitch says, waving a hand. "Until you guys break out the clubs and the knives, anyway. Or whatever else. All I'm saying- the whole suppository thing isn't much of a threat, considering."

"Fair enough," Guard One says, reverting to his pseudo-friendly tone. "Here, then. One at a time. Do you need water?"

"Yeah," Haymitch says shortly, looking away.

Guard One produces a small plastic bottle of water and drops a single pill into Haymitch's palm. Haymitch closes his fingers around it quickly, before it can fall to the dusty floor. His hand is shaking. Not too badly when he keeps it down at his side, but holding it out in front of him is a whole different matter.

"You want me to feed them to you?" Absom asks, smirking nastily.

"Whatever floats your weird little boat," Haymitch says with a shrug, because he sees already that they're trying to get a rise out of him. If they do, they'll be on him with all the confidence of numbers and weapons and their fucking _health_.

"Swallow it. Then hold out both hands, palms up."

Haymitch fumbles the cap off the bottle of water, dropping it carelessly. He swallows the pill with a gulp of water and then holds out both hands, the bottle still clasped tightly in his right.

"Give that over," Absom says, confiscating the bottle. Guard One checks both his hands, grasping them and turning them over. "Open your mouth." Rolling his eyes again, Haymitch complies.

But when the guard reaches towards him, he snaps his teeth together with an audible _clack_. "You people called me a dog before you had any cause. But, since I _am_ a dog, beware the teeth."

Guard One nods expressionlessly. "Absom? If you would?"

Haymitch tenses up again, curling his left hand into a fist. But Absom just turns and exits the cell, closing the door behind him.

The remaining guard doesn't take his eyes off Haymitch, but fuck it. The longer he stays here, the less there'll be of him.

His lunge is met with a hard blow across the shoulder that quite effectively overwhelms what little balance he had. He crashes to the floor and it feels like something in his side explodes. He retches, scrambling up as far as his hands and knees, his head deeply bowed as his shoulders heave.

"Don't throw up," a loud, firm voice commands. It gets through to him and he swallows hard, once, twice, three times. Finally the retching subsides. Sitting up fully, Haymitch fixes a baleful gaze on the guard standing over him.

"Kind of a dick move," he mutters.

The guard smiles down at him with something terribly akin to approval. "You've got balls, anyway. Not that that's going to do you any good here."

"What do we have here?" Absom asks, stepping back through the door. Something of straps and glinting steel dangles loosely from his hand.

"I think we got the bluster and posturing out of the way," Guard One says pleasantly.

"Oh, screw you," Haymitch says. "Any damn coward can swing a fucking stick." He half-rises before sinking down to his knees again as the vertigo threatens to overwhelm him.

"Stay down, boy," Absom commands. He grabs the cuffs from their loop on his belt and moves around behind the prisoner. Haymitch lets the guard cuff him. It's going to happen no matter what he does, and if they push him down he's pretty sure he will throw up. It occurs to him that that's the way he's meant to see things here: Go _along with them or they'll hurt you worse_. They've already got him thinking exactly how they want him to. Was he always this pathetic? Disgusted, he lowers his head and waits for whatever's next.

Then Absom's hand is on his throat, sliding up to grip his jaw, forcing his head sharply back, and he can't twist away because Absom is still fucking _behind_ him and he only ends up pushing his back against the fucker's chest, and he lurches forward as hard as he can but it's useless, he can barely move in that direction with his head held back in Absom's vice-like grip, and there's hot breath against his right ear, the one with the diamonds, "Easy, easy now, stop", and he curls his fingers against the fuckers abdomen and tries to dig them in, for all the good that will do, but what else is there? He let them cuff him…

"Stop that." Absom jerks his jaw roughly back and forth. "I've got him, Keln. Let's get the muzzle on him. Maybe that'll calm him down."

The other guard- Keln- crouches beside him, and a hard rubber bit is shoved between his lips and to the back of his mouth. Canvas straps first encircle his head and then tighten, pulling the bit even further back until it's lodged immovably between his wisdom teeth.

"There. How's that feel?"Absom says, letting go of his head.

Breathing heavily, Haymitch shakes his head. He can't close his mouth all the way. The rubber bit wedged between his teeth keeps his jaws about an inch apart. He can open his mouth wider than that, but he can't close it. His wrists are still cuffed behind him. Helplessness and humiliation make his breathing harsher even as he wishes to the bottom of his (worthless) soul that he could just _stop_ breathing. Whatever they're planning to do now (and he can think of a few things, can't help thinking of them) it's going to be exponentially worse with this thing on him. He doesn't see how he can survive this, and he knows he will anyway. Okay. S'okay. Not the first time. Won't be the last. And they'll kill him eventually. When they're finished with him.

"Now that's better," says Keln. "You have three more pills to take." Absom tilts his head back again, and Keln reaches into his mouth to put the pill on the back of his tongue. Keln removes his fingers and touches a control on the side of the muzzle and the bit flattens so that Absom can push his jaws closed. A hand rubs his throat until he refex-swallows. Then the bit expands again.

"Now, don't fight it. Most you'll do is loosen a tooth or two."

There's nothing to be done. Nothing he can do. He can't struggle, and 'cooperation' is meaningless when they control everything. He's moved, like an object, fed the pills. Hands under his jaw, hands on his throat, hands in his mouth. Their hands are everywhere, and he can't move.

"Ease up a little," Keln says, eyeing the prisoner. "He's not convulsing, is he?"

Absom lets go of Haymitch and Haymitch slumps forward over his own knees. Both guards watch him for a moment before Absom speaks again. "He's just trembling. I think we're scaring him, Keln."

"Maybe he's smarter than he looks, then. Alright, get him back up. One more pill to go, and then I'll go ahead and give him the alcohol while you've got him."

He's dragged back against them, his chin knocked up and back, fingers in his mouth, a sharp ache in his jaw as the bit stops him from biting down, swallowing. Then there's a new sensation: the bite of a needle in his forearm.

The hands are gone and warmth is spreading up his arm and into his chest, and from there the warmth travels through the rest of him. His wrists are free again. It takes him a few seconds to notice that. When he does notice he sits up, bracing his hands on the floor and waiting for things to sort themselves out. Sensations coalesce into a situation, and he waits more or less calmly. Until things make some kind of sense again, there's no point thrashing about.

Sometimes there's just no choice, when he wakes up from one of the bad ones. Flailing, shouting; a figure waiting at the periphery of his vision, out of reach but still too damn close. Features come into focus (things starting to coalesce) and panic becomes rage that has to be damped down into dull anger and irritation, so quick it burns him. It's only the girl, waiting ten feet away, impatience in her expression and an animalistic readiness to dart away in every line of her posture. Katniss.

Haymitch claws at the straps, trying to tear the hateful contraption off of him.

"Easy! I'll get it off for you," Keln says. "Put your hands down. Now, or I'll cuff you again and we'll leave you in the cuffs and the muzzle until you've had time to calm down."

Haymitch lowers his hands and flinches away from the repulsive touch on the side of his face before forcing himself to hold still.

"We've got a cell-mate for you," Keln tells him, standing and brushing himself off. "We'll bring her in and leave you two to get acquainted."

"Hell's bells, what now?" Haymitch mutters.

"Don't worry. I think you'll like her."

Her? Katniss? Effie? Shit. Katniss got away, though…

Absom brings her in, and it's a kid, a little girl. She has long blond hair that hangs in a shaggy curtain around her shoulders. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her chest. He doesn't even recognize her until she looks up and meets his eyes.

"Haymitch, meet Camilia. Your daughter," Absom announces.


	74. Twenty Questions

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: I paraphrased a quote from Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' in the previous chapter. Forgot to give credit. I've reloaded that chapter with several small alterations, as I really do not know where my mind was when I first posted it. Didn't remember that I _had_ posted it. And I guess I didn't proofread it at all.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 74**

Haymitch laughs. "Not even close. I've never seen this girl before. And I sure as hell don't have any kids."

"You do, though. This clever girl tricked her way into the presidential mansion in a misguided attempt to work who knows what kind of mischief. Audacious, impulsive, short-sighted- certainly sounds like your bastard, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess she does, at that," Haymitch says, sparing the girl a spiky little smile. Does _she_ recognize _him_? "Just one little problem. I've only fucked Capitolites, see, and don't you people start birth control injections when the girls are like sixteen? And even if it didn't work, or one of my dalliances wasn't on it for some reason-"

"Like if the lady in question was recently married," Absom interrupts helpfully.

Haymitch gives him a hard look. "Yeah," he says after a moment, "if she was _married_, or something, a Capitolite sure as hell wouldn't _have_ the kid of a mine rat from 12."

"Naturally we were curious about who her parents were, and how she ended up in Miss Snow's chambers-"

"Nice," Haymitch interrupts, eyes moving back to the girl. "That's actually pretty damn impressive, for a kid."

Camilia is obviously scared, and Haymitch can see from here that she's been knocked around. But she smiles back at him, for a second, and mouths, _Thanks_.

"So we did a DNA test. We've got DNA from every citizen in the Districts from their first Reaping on, and every Capitolite from the day they're born. Well, you don't need to know the lady's name. I'm sure you wouldn't remember her anyway. She happened to be young and soft-hearted and chose to carry the bastard to term. And nine months later, Baby Girl 12 was sent to the orphanage in District 4."

"Twelve? What, so far that year?"

"it happens. The same impulse that makes them want to make pets of their favorite Victors makes it seem, to some of them, almost like killing a puppy."

"Well, since I've got no reason not to trust you," Haymitch says with elaborate sarcasm.

Keln shrugs. "We thought since we happened to have her sire in custody she ought to meet him. We'll be back later to check on you two. Play nice, now."

"See you soon," Absom promises with a menacing smile.

Keln suddenly shoves Camilia forward. She stumbles, throwing out her arms, but keeps her feet and spins around just as the door slams.

"Stand down, girl. They're gone," Haymitch says tiredly. "Come over here."

But for a moment after she turns to him the girl just stares in silence. It's an odd look for one so young, intent and speculative. Then she walks slowly forward and stops in front of him.

Haymitch gives her stare for stare as he cautiously gets to his feet again, smiling in sudden amusement at the way she cranes her neck so as to maintain eye contact. She's the first to speak.

"I'm Camilia Rinn," she says formally. "I am honored to meet you."

Haymitch snorts. "Haymitch," he introduces himself sarcastically. "The honor is mine, lady." He executes a bow, enjoying how ludicrous this has suddenly become. Hell of an improvement over a couple of minutes ago, anyway.

A frown crosses Camilia's features. "You're laughing at me."

"_Yeah_," Haymitch says. Then he sighs, the smile fading from his lips. She's just a kid, and while the bit about her being his is probably just another mind game, he knows a little something about how she got here and he can guess what its cost her. "With you," he relents. "Laughing with you."

She tilts her head at him before she concedes with a quiet laugh, pretending to share the joke of their current existence.

"Sit down, okay?" Haymitch says, already sagging back against the wall.

"Okay." Camille sinks gracefully to her knees, tucking her feet under her as she watches Haymitch slide his back down the wall until he can settle on the floor. His hand briefly touches the scars again. "Are you alright?"

"Super," Haymitch replies, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes. "So- District 4? Orphanage?"

"Yes, that's all true. Is it okay if I call you 'father'?"

Haymitch lays his head back against the cold stone. "Wise up, girl. That's just something they said." He doesn't want to look at her any longer because he's not sure she won't see how much this is scaring him. _You've already called me 'father'_. And if she recognizes him, if she lets on, things could get so much worse. He turns his face away from her, knowing it's only a matter of time.

"It's not! It's not just something they said. They told me, at the orphanage. I've known since I was five years old, and I never told anyone. I kept it safe for six years. I always wanted to meet you."

"That doesn't make sense," Haymitch mutters. If she were really his bastard, got on some Capitolite woman and given up to an orphanage at birth, there's no way the administrators of the orphanage would have been made aware of either side of her parentage. She'd have been delivered to them completely anonymous, to protect the privacy and reputation of the Capitolite.

Of course, there are ways to find out anything. And what's the alternative? That someone's been lying to her since she was five, or she's lying to him right now.

"It's true," she insists.

"You can call me Haymitch," he tells her.

Camilia nods, her eyes over-bright. She comes to his side then, half-crawling, and leans her small form against him. Haymitch twitches away. She's leaning against his right side, and he snaps at her before he can stop himself. "Get off!"

"Sorry," she mumbles. And then she leans back against the wall, draws her knees up to her chest, and begins to cry softly.

"Gods," Haymitch mutters under his breath. He probably could have handled that better. "Don't do that," he tells her, trying for a cajoling tone. "Come on. What's it gonna help?"

"Not crying," she sniffles with the effortless absurdity children always seem to gravitate towards. "Leave me alone. I don't want _you_, either."

"Oh for f- … for frick's sake," Haymitch groans. "Look, that side hurts, okay? Those red marks aren't lipstick. I only told you to get off because you were laying against it."

Camilia looks up, wiping her eyes. "Really?"

"Sure. I mean, why not?" Haymitch thumps his left hand against the floor to cover that bit of involuntary sarcasm. "Sit over here." She hesitates, her expression guarded and her eyes red. "Come on," he coaxes. "It's alright. S'okay."

Her resolve crumbles all at once, and she scrambles right over his lap to get to the indicated spot before snuggling as close against his left side as she can get. "Father?"

"Haymitch."

"Sorry. Haymitch, am I going to die?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I don't see any reason for them to kill a little kid like you. You didn't poison Snow's granddaughter or something, did you?"

Camilia shudders against him but doesn't say anything.

"Smart girl," Haymitch murmurs, his voice barely a breath. In a more normal tone he continues, "Failing something like that, you'll probably get out eventually." Unless they decide he believes that bit about her being his daughter, in which case they might do anything to her in order to use her as leverage. It's the most time-honored political tactic in Panem. The kindest thing he could do would be to push her away and put on a show of indifference towards her. In a few minutes, he tells himself without any real conviction.

"Are you going to die?" she asks him.

"Yes. Hundred percent on that one. They will definitely kill me." He shrugs and tries to keep his voice matter-of-fact.

"I don't want you to die," she implores, and she sounds so afraid.

"Easy come, easy go. You don't even know me. Don't worry about it."

"Known you for six years," she says tremulously.

"Camilia… look, whether they told you the truth about that or not-"

"They _did_. I felt it the first time I saw you on TV. And I've got your eyes. Gray, like yours. They dyed them blue, but they're really just like yours."

"Whether it's true or _not_," he continues ineluctably, "they showed you a very carefully selected version of me. A cleaned-up, kid-friendly version. They wanted you to feel proud of being my _so-called_ daughter. You don't know me any more than I know you. We're strangers who landed in the same room. Don't let it mean more to you than that."

"I need you. _Please stay_."

"You know it's not going to be up to me," he says weakly. Damn it. His or not, this is just… Goddamn it.

She wraps thin arms around him and he can't escape the feel of her tears against his skin. "I'm scared," she cries at him.

He puts an arm around her and in so doing damns them both. But, what choice? When is there ever a choice? They own the Game, and him, and her. "You're okay," he tells her, sticking to what's technically true, for the moment. "We're both okay. Are you hurting?"

"Only a little," she tells him. "They hit me…"

"Yeah, well, they're cowardly, low-life shits." She goes very still; he casts a look down at her. "Sorry," he mutters uncomfortably. "I'm not used to being around kids."

"It's okay," she says, actually giggling a little. It's pretty damn amazing, that sound, and Haymitch laughs with her. "They are shits, aren't they?" she says boldly.

"Yeah," he agrees, still smiling a bit. "They been feeding you?"

"Not for a while. Maybe yesterday, or the day before," she replies. "I'm a little hungry. More hungry than hurt. Do you have food?"

"Not yet," he tells her, trying to keep the sudden sick dread out of his voice. He hugs her to his side for a just a couple of seconds, his mind racing. "Soon. Until then… want to learn a few other names for people who hit little kids? But just between us, okay? Don't say any of these words in front of them…"


	75. Colors and Secrets, Secrets and Colors

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Sorry this is a day late. I was traveling and got back later than I expected.

Note2: Thanks for the review, Dash11! Camilia's mother was just some Capitolite woman Haymitch spent a night or two with a long time ago. I figure there must have been several over the years, right?

Note3: Okay, this one is kind of disturbing. Some messed up insinuations involving a kid, some torture, even more language than usual.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 75**

Somehow Haymitch falls asleep. He's still anemic, his body struggling to repair the massive damage inflicted on it just two weeks ago. If he were in any sort of safe and stable environment, he'd doubtless feel very tired and weak. Here, fear and visceral panic and adrenalin-fueled rage and the deep pitying dread he feels in connection with his cell-mate camouflage this instinctive awareness of his physical condition. And so one moment he's leaning against the wall, an arm wrapped loosely around Camille- and the next a heavy foot is planted between his shoulders, crushing him against the floor.

"Keep _still_," Absom grunts, wrenching Haymitch's arm up at an unnatural angle.

"Father!" a shrill voice cries from somewhere off to the side.

"Ow! Damn it! I'm not struggling, you fucking moron!" Haymitch grits out. His other arm is twisted back and up, and both of his arms are going to break or come out of their sockets any second now. "I give, okay? I give! Stop!" he pleads. He can't get his eyes to focus.

Then Absom does let go of his arms and steps off him. Haymitch rolls onto his side, realizing only as the red pain in his shoulders begins to recede that his wrists are once more cuffed behind him.

"Don't hurt him!" Camille begs, and Haymitch lurches upright.

"Stay out of it," he snaps at the girl, just hoping she'll have the sense to keep back.

"She was curled up against you like a puppy when we came in," Keln says mockingly. "It was sweet. So nice to see a family reunited."

"Yeah, still not buying that bullshit," Haymitch retorts, rolling his eyes. "But hey, congratulations on tricking a scared eleven-year-old. You are king of the mindfuck." He inclines his head in a sarcastic bow.

"We're not going to hurt your daddy, precious," Absom says in a saccharine tone. "We wouldn't do that. Here, come give him a kiss."

"The fuck-" Haymitch utters in shocked disgust. He tries to stand but Absom's already behind him, jerking his head back until he's looking straight ahead at the ceiling. Keln kneels in front of him and says calmly, "Stay down." Haymitch jerks and voices a brief cry as Keln slices open his skin all along the line of one of his clavicles. The knife is taken away and the voice repeats, "Stay down." Then Absom lets go of him.

Breathing heavily, Haymitch looks from one of them to the other. He'd expected this kind of thing, known it was inevitable. This is the Capitol dungeons, and he's a traitor. There's going to be torture, and it's going to get a lot worse than that. But now he knows that the reality of it is not something he can possibly be prepared for. He isn't capable. But it's going to happen anyway.

"Stop! Please, please don't hurt him!" Camille begs, and she's crying now. She sounds so afraid. Haymitch's gray eyes find hers.

"Knock it off," he tells her. "What's it gonna help?" They'll play with her because she's so upset. If she could just ignore what doesn't involve her, just wait quietly, maybe they'd leave her out of it.

"Don't you love your daddy?" Absom is saccharine again as he turns on the crying girl. "Come give him a kiss."

"Sick fucks," Haymitch says quietly. He's shaking.

Camille approaches and gives him a quick peck on the cheek. Then she burrows against his side and wraps her arms tightly around his chest.

"Kiss him where he hurt himself," Absom leers. "Right where he's bleeding."

"Okay," Haymitch growls. "Okay, that's about enough."

"Stay down," Keln says, unsheathing his knife. Absom steps forward again.

"No!" Camille cries out, and she hurriedly kisses Haymitch along the ridge of his clavicle. When she tilts her face up to him there's the gleam of his blood on her lips. Haymitch shudders, looking away. She doesn't have a fucking clue. She's just too young. How far are they going to try to take this? How many times is Keln going to cut on him before this is over? What if he starts on Camille?

"We'd better go on and feed him, I suppose," Keln says unexpectedly. "The interrogator won't want to be kept waiting."

A petulant scowl twists Absom's features, giving him almost the aspect of an overgrown kid that's been called away from a game just at the fun part. He grabs Camille by the arm and drags her away to the corner of the cell. "Stay there, and keep your pretty little mouth shut," he commands, looming menacingly over her.

"Do what the cowardly shit says, girl," Haymitch calls, working to sound amused and disdainful. Absom turns back to him just as though Haymitch has him on a string. It's almost too easy.

"Did you hear what he said?" Absom asks no one in particular. His eyes stay fixed on Haymitch, and there're about seventy promises of pain in them, but under all that Haymitch is pretty sure there's a glimmer of incredulity.

"Absom. He's from the outer districts. It takes months of coaching to teach them to behave like civilized humans, and it never sticks anyway. Now hold him so I can give him his food. If you would."

"I'll eat it on my own," Haymitch asserts, even though he can see it's pointless. The muzzle is just part of this, and they won't need an excuse to use it. It doesn't actually hurt, anyway. He guesses he can deal with it.

"I don't think you'd find the food exactly to your liking," Keln says. He produces a quart-sized clear plastic container from a bag near his feet. It's filled with a thick pale yellow sludge. He tilts it back and forth in front of Haymitch. "Probably it tasted better before they mixed the liquor into it. But even then, I doubt it was all that palatable."

"If you try to pour that down my throat I'm just going to throw up." Haymitch shrugs, wincing at the twinge it causes in his shoulders. "Just saying. I don't want to throw up, mostly because Bluto there looks like he's about an inch away from having an all-out tantrum as it is. I don't want to, but it's just something that's going to happen. So why don't you uncuff me and just let me _drink_ it, and this plays out better for everyone."

"You won't throw up. It's laced with anti-emetics. Also antibiotics. Also just enough liquor to keep you from going into withdrawal and turning into a useless idiot covered in his own vomit and piss. Perfectly formulated for you. You should be very grateful. But don't worry; you won't be tasting it. Absom?"

Absom takes hold of him once again, tilting his head back with a hand wrapped around his jaw. Haymitch tries to keep his bare back from coming into contact with Absom's chest, but it's impossible. Absom's thighs on either side of him force him to keep his own legs folded under him. Legs, arms, hands, feet, head: he can barely move any part of his body. The sense of helplessness and vulnerability threatens to stifle all other thought. Then his mouth is forced open. But instead of the bit of the muzzle, something cylindrical and hard and smooth enters his mouth. The hand moves to his jaw again and he tries to bite down. Whatever it is, it's too hard to bite through. It pushes further in and he gags and a hand begins to rub his throat.

"Swallow," Keln's voice demands from somewhere outside his field of vision. "Go on, swallow. It'll be easier."

Reflexively, he does. And suddenly he feels the end of it slide into his throat. It blocks his throat completely, sliding in quickly now, going deeper. He can't breathe; he's choking on it. He can't bite down anymore. All he can do is jerk helplessly.

Then comes a ghastly feeling of heaviness, like his insides are being filled with scoopfuls of sand. His stomach cramps repeatedly. The heaviness, the pressure, keeps getting worse.

It seems to go on and on as his vision gets hazy and bright flashes start to appear at the edges. Then suddenly there's the feel of the tube being dragged back up, up his throat, through his mouth. His tongue is coated with slime, and as the last of it is pulled free he gags.

"Let him loose," Keln says.

Absom obeys, pushing off Haymitch's back as he stands up. "Dinner is served. How'd you like it?" he jeers.

Haymitch spits, dragging his teeth over his tongue and gagging again at the sensation of the yellow gunk building up in front of his teeth. Then a coughing fit seizes him, doubling him over.

"Stop carrying on," Keln laughs. "Believe me, that was _nothing_."

They frog-march him, still bare-footed and bare-chested and cuffed, down a long fluorescent-lit hallway done in sea green tiles and numbered doors with tiny windows in each. It's eerily quiet, no noise coming from any of the room they pass. Are they all empty? Where are Prim and Rue and the kids' families? Where are they keeping Peeta?

And what fucking good do you think that information would do you?

The interrogator is a small man with wire-rimmed glasses and dark-brown hair combed straight back from his scalp. He's seated on one side of a white table afloat in more of the sea green tiles. No less than three folders are open on the table in front of him.

The chair the guards push Haymitch down into is bolted to the floor and covered with straps. His cuffs are attached to a metal loop set into the chair's back; then Keln and Absom step back where he can't see them without craning his neck around. Loose canvas straps brush his arms and legs and shoulders like a threat.

"You are in the White Room," the interrogator says without preamble, staring intensely at him across the table. "There is one White Room. There are many Red Rooms. If you answer every question put to you, truthfully and completely, you will never have to go to the Red Rooms. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Haymitch says warily. "Shoot."

"What is your full name?"

Haymitch rolls his eyes. Here he is in the friggin' Capitol Dungeons, being threatened with who knows what kind of sick torture if he doesn't confess everything and name his frigin' associates, and still they want to wade through Bullshit Creek before they get down to it.

"Hesitation is a sign of fabrication," the interrogator says tonelessly, blinking at him. Haymitch is almost intimidated by that, for a second. So he gives his head a quick shake and calls up a sarcastic smile.

"Haymitch Abernathy," he says, inclining his head slightly.

"What is your date of birth?"

"December 12th, NPY 33."

"Name any living relatives, along with their familial connection to you."

Haymitch doesn't even hesitate. If they really want what remains of his family, they can find them easily enough. At worst, he's saving them a little time. "Tenna Abernathy and Deidre Abernathy, cousins. They might have different last names by now. I don't know if they've got kids. And that's it. I may be the very last Abernathy in District 12, for all I know." He chuckles, a little bitterly. "Imagine that."

"When did you first make contact with the traitor Plutarch Heavensbee?"

Poker-faced, Haymitch replies, "We were introduced at the… 71st Victors' Ball."

"Were you a member of the so-called Underground at that time?"

"No."

"Plutarch was one of your clients on several occasions in the past two years. He booked you on nine separate occasions, in fact."

Haymitch doesn't say anything to that. Had it only been nine times? It had seemed like a hell of a lot more.

"Did you enjoy it?" the interrogator asks blandly, looking at him as though this is a completely sane question and not wildly irrelevant at all.

"Yeah," Haymitch drawls sarcastically. "Rocked my goddamn fucking world."

The interrogator writes something on one of his papers. Haymitch twists his wrists back and forth, letting the metal bite into his skin.

"We know Plutarch was the one who recruited you to the underground. When was that?"

"I haven't heard shit about any underground," Haymitch growls resentfully. "That's why you idiots took me away from my execution?"

"When did Plutarch recruit you to the underground?"

"Told you. Never happened." He stares right back into those intense eyes.

"When did Plutarch recruit you to the underground?"

"Hell's bells," Haymitch says, rolling his eyes. "Guess we're gonna do this all friggin' night, huh?" He can feel the blood starting to trickle down his wrist. "Let me spell it out for you. Plutarch was just lousy sex every other month or so. A name on a list. He always offered me a drink before we got down to it, so he wasn't a complete waste of time. Then mediocre sex. Then, see you later, honey." He shrugs, his smile becoming saturnine. "You think we discussed politics somewhere in there? Because all I remember discussing is how 'big' he was." He tilts his head. "Damn it. I meant to do air-quotes when I said 'big'."

"Red Room Number 5," the interrogator says in the same inflectionless tone.

"A beating's not going to magically alter reality, morons," Haymitch snaps as the guards yank him up by the arms. "You've got the wrong man!"

In a different hallway, there are numbered doors with no windows. The hall stretches on into the distance; Haymitch literally can't see the end of it. A rush of vertigo comes over him, and he trips. Absom's hand clenches on his arm, holding him upright for the couple of seconds it takes to regain his balance. Haymitch curses without even hearing himself, still staring down the endless passageway. _There are many Red Rooms_.

Room 5. Keln fits a key into the lock and opens the door with a click of deadbolts. Haymitch looks around the room quickly. There's a narrow table in the center of the room, under a bright white light. There are straps hanging down from the table, but also metal loops on the sides. On the floor around the table four gleaming basins are attached to extra legs running up to the underside. Eight legs, and Haymitch immediately christens this the Spider Table. And as that phrase rises from his subconscious he feels a thrill of terror. He tries to wrench free, but the guards hold him all the tighter_. Spiders. Shit_. He's shaking, and his heart thunders painfully against the walls of his chest. His side throbs hotly, and a thousand scittering legs seem to rush across his skin.

They drag him to the Spider Table and one of them takes the cuffs off his bloody wrists. "Get up there. Lie on your back."

"What the hell is this?" Haymitch tries to back away, tries to turn, but they won't let him take even one step away from the platform.

"He's going to need help," Keln says. Absom nods and presses a button on his radio.

The four guards who enter the room less than thirty seconds later hoist the struggling prisoner onto the table and pin him down while Keln fastens the straps across his chest and forehead and hips. Absom forces his arms down over the sides and tightens the metal loops around them below his shoulders, then drags Haymitch's feet over the sides and fastens the lower set of loops below his knees. Keln wraps a splint of thin metal bars around each arm from the loops down over the wrists. Then they step back.

He can barely move. His arms hang straight down off the table, wrenching his shoulders back, and he can't bend them at elbow or wrist. His legs are bent at the knees, lower halves hanging down like his arms. He can't even raise his head or turn it from side to side. He rolls his eyes and watches the four reinforcements leave without a word. He's once again alone with Keln and Absom.

"What the hell is this?" he asks again.

"Let's start with his left hand," Keln says.

"Start what?" Haymitch tries to draw his hand up, can't even flex the wrist. "Goddamn it! What the fuck is this?"

There's running water. Absom is holding an insulated tube, filling up the basin below Haymitch's left hand. Steam rises from the water, and fine droplets splash against Haymitch's fingers. He can feel the heat rising. He understands. His breath catches in his throat.

The basin filled with boiling water rises smoothly along its support. Haymitch clenches his hand into a fist, but seconds later the water rises up over it. His breath tears out of him in a hoarse yell. Tears spring to his eyes. Can't pull his hand out of it, and he can't tell if his hand is even moving. The first shock of it is what makes his yell, but it keeps getting worse. Somehow every second is _worse_. He can't hear himself, can't feel anything except what's happening to his hand. Vision remains to him, but it's useless, it's white lights and sea-green tiles and his hand is boiling, cooking, worse, getting worse, _worse_.

The basin lowers. It takes a few seconds before Haymitch even realizes his hand is out of the boiling water. He tries to curl his fingers. They don't respond, but the cooked skin _crackles_. He closes his eyes, swallowing, trying to focus on nothing but keeping quiet.

"We'll do his left foot next," Keln says from above him.

"No!" Haymitch bites back the rest of the plea, making a small incoherent sound instead. The fear is so much greater, now. Now that he knows what it's going to feel like. Nothing you can do to stop them. Don't beg. Don't cry. Focus on not making a sound. Focus on that, instead of your boiled hand that doesn't move, or the crackling skin.

It had sounded like fat droplets falling into a bed of burning sticks, something he used to hear at the Seam on his way to see Ripper. Are pieces of his skin falling off like drops of fat off cooking meat? No sound except the crackling.

Then something worse: water splashing into a basin. Helplessly he twists and lunges against the straps. His left ankle's free, but that won't grant him even a second's reprieve. Haymitch bites down hard on his lower lip, desperate to focus on anything else. Burning droplets prick the sole of his bare foot.

Then comes the water. Hideous pain, boiling, lapping over his heel and climbing to his ankle, and he loses all control of that extremity as it becomes as useless as his hand. He yells again and then sobs hard enough to wrench something in his chest as the rest of his foot plunges beneath the surface. It's cooking, and he thrashes against the straps and the loops, curling the fingers of his right hand into a fist. His left hand barely twitches.

"Fuck fuck fuck ow damnit fuck stop _stop_." But it goes on and on. He stops breathing. The world goes dark.

There's a stinging pain in his nose and he coughs and tries futilely to draw back. He's still strapped down. Smelling salts. And- fucking hell, his fucking hand and his fucking foot.

"Stop. Let me up. I'll talk, okay?"

Keln taps his own chin, standing where Haymitch can see him. "What do you think, Absom? You think he'll talk?"

"I think all he'll do is lie. I think he needs another demonstration of what happens to liars around here."

"Are you going to lie anymore, Haymitch?" Keln asks.

"No."

"See? He's already doing it. Just can't help himself," Absom says, shaking his head.

"I think he's learned. Let's give him a second chance," Keln says decisively. He crouches down and presses his thumb into the palm of Haymitch's left hand. Haymitch shuts his eyes tightly and grits his teeth. "Look at me, Haymitch." He opens his eyes and Keln grins and holds up his thumb. It's smeared with blood. "If we have to bring you here again, we'll do your right hand and foot."

"Figured," Haymitch replies. How strained his voice sounds. On the edge of breaking. He coughs again, noticing his throat is raw.

They undo the splints first, then the loops, and finally the straps. Haymitch sits up, pulling his right foot onto the table and staring down at his left hand. It's bright red, the same color as a ripe tomato, blisters already rising all over it. The fingers are splayed and half-curled. He tries again to flex them and the pain roars up, making him feel dizzy and nauseous.

"You're free," Absom smiles at him. "Hop down. The interrogator is waiting."

Haymitch casts Absom a look of pure hatred; if it has any impact he's beyond noticing. Hell, why would it, anyway? He swings his right leg over to sit on the left side of the table. Grimly he considers the logistics of it. He'll be lame, for a start. His right foot has always been a little worse than the left one, ever since the Victors Ball. Now the left foot hangs dead at the end of his leg, dead to everything except pain. He cradles his left hand, holding it an inch above his lap as he tries to figure out just how the hell he's supposed to stand up.

"You'll need this," Keln says, holding out a cane. "Guess you'll have to learn to use it with the wrong hand. You see what becomes of liars now, don't you?"

Haymitch doesn't bother to answer. On top of everything else is the pain, like thick frosting on a Capitolite cake. Thick red frosting. The kind with three inch high bows or flowers or something nauseating like that. But seething right below the pain is the hatred, the sheer impotent rage at what they did to him, at being strapped down, at having that tube forced down his throat and that disgusting slop pumped into him, the goddamned _muzzle_. If he lets himself say anything right now he's going to lose the other hand and foot. But, damn, even fear doesn't eat at him like _this_.

Before handing the cane over, Keln adds, "First time you try to hit someone with this, or do anything but walk where you're told to walk with it, I'll take it back and you can crawl from then on. Understand?"

"Yeah. I _understand_. Only way I'll ever use it for anything else is if I get you down on the floor and get the chance to try shoving it down your throat," Haymitch says deliberately. He grabs the cane with his right hand, twisting it away from Keln.

Brace it on the floor, awkwardly crossing the right arm in front of himself to do that. Lower the right foot and shift his weight down onto it. Lower the left foot.

He hisses and draws his left foot up again. But now he's standing on the right foot and the cane. The guards move in and take his arms and begin pulling him steadily forward. He can't make it more than a few steps, can't keep up, not when he's essentially hopping. The guards don't even pause when he loses his balance and all of his weight falls on them. They drag him on between them. His feet scrape over the concrete, the jolts from his right foot providing a counterpoint to the constant screaming of the nerves in his left foot. A thin trail of blood marks their passage down the hall to the White Room.


	76. Reunion

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 76**

When he gets back to the cell, Peeta's waiting for him. He's sitting against the far wall with his arm wrapped protectively around Camilia. He's etiolate, haggard, dressed like Haymitch in thin gray pants and nothing else. His right arm hangs at his side, curling to the floor where his hand lays palm-up like a small dead animal. The molded plastic of his artificial foot protrudes from the leg of his trousers. It occurs to Haymitch that this is the first time he's ever seen part of Peeta's prosthetic leg. Is Mr. Mental Health actually self-conscious about it?

The kid's asleep- Peeta, he means- but Camilia takes care of that quick enough by wriggling out from under his arm and hurrying over to wrap her arms around Haymitch. "Are you okay?" she asks, her words muffled against his side.

"Haymitch!" Peeta exclaims, standing up. His right arm still dangles unmoving and he can't even get the name out without his voice breaking a little.

"Peeta," Haymitch replies. "Hello. Welcome to hell."

"I thought you were dead."

"Not quite." He looks pointedly at the kid's arm. "Broken?"

Peeta swallows. "Yeah. I think so. I heard a cracking sound when it happened."

Haymitch sits down clumsily, leaning on his right hand and grimly fighting the need to sink down the rest of the way and just lie there on the concrete. He wishes Camilia had let Peeta sleep a little longer. At least until he could have made it to the wall. Would have made sitting upright a hell of a lot easier.

"What happened to your foot? And your hand…"

"Boiling water," Haymitch replies shortly. Just saying it makes him shudder. "You still alright, girl?"

"Yes," Camilia replies. "I'm okay. Pretty hungry. They brought us some water a little while after Peeta got here, but they still haven't brought any food."

"Katniss got away," Peeta tells him.

"I know," Haymitch says with a sigh.

"So at least there's that. At least she's safe."

"Yeah. There's that. What happened?"

"The Capitol Guard showed up in a hovercraft. They cuffed me and took me aboard. Took you out of the cage. I thought you were dead. You hadn't moved in more than four hours, and I couldn't hear you breathing anymore…" His voice breaks a little, a he shakes his head and swallows before continuing. "That was a long time ago. Weeks, I think. Katniss had already gone to the Capitol. I don't know how she got away."

"So that's us. How'd you end up here?" Haymitch asks Camilia off-handedly, not looking directly at her.

"They found me in the President's mansion," Camilia says simply. She doesn't offer to elaborate.

Haymitch snorts in amusement. "The girl's a better spy than either of us."

"I'm not a spy," Camilia says.

Simultaneously: "Haymitch…" Peeta says warningly.

"Sorry," Haymitch says, raising his remaining hand in surrender. The left one twitches and crackles and burns, but it doesn't rise. "Stupid joke. I'm- I think I might actually be a little bit sloshed." That or in shock. He'd rather believe that weird floaty feeling he's just noticing is from the alcohol.

"They're letting you drink?"

"Kinda. Yeah." He shrugs and searches for a way to change the subject. Now he's thirsty, too. Light-headed and dry-mouthed. "You said they brought water?"

Peeta gestures towards a stainless steel dish of the type usually given to dogs. Haymitch nods wearily and gives up on the idea. They took the cane away before they pushed him in here, and there's not a chance in hell he can get up without even a wall to lean on. His left foot won't take any weight at all. The knee just buckles when he tries. If he'd stayed up he probably could have hopped over to the wall and the water dish, but he's damn sure not going to crawl. Not in front of Peeta, anyway. Maybe after the boy goes back to sleep.

He lies down.

Someone touches his shoulder and he startles and jerks away.

"It's okay. It's only me," Peeta says softly. He's there next to Haymitch, and Haymitch lies back down and feels Peeta settle down at his back, not quite touching him. A moment later Camilia curls her small body against his chest and belly, her toes brushing his knees.

The next time the guards show up, they take Peeta. They get something around his neck and yank him up by that and then pull his arms behind his back to cuff his wrists. Never mind that one of his arms is fucking _broken_. Doesn't matter to them, does it?

At Peeta's harsh, choked-sounding cry Haymitch gets himself up, standing on both feet and swaying, forgetting for a second why one of his feet feels so damned _wrong_. His left hand won't curl into a fist, so he throws a punch with his right one. The club hits him in the chest and one of his ribs snaps. He falls on it and grays out for a few minutes. By the time he comes around, Peeta is gone. Camilia's still there, sitting close by him and shivering miserably.

"Where's Peeta?" Haymitch asks, pushing himself up. "Aw, fuck." He lowers his head and breathes deeply and focuses on not passing out again. He wishes he could believe the new pain in his chest was a heart attack.

"They took him," Camilia says hopelessly.

"When? How long ago?"

"Five or ten minutes, maybe."

Haymitch looks toward the closed cell door. "Could you help me up?"

Leaning his good hand on her shoulder, he climbs to his feet. He's almost finished. "Walk towards the door. Slowly." Camilia does as she's told, listening to the step-drag of his gait. Haymitch closes his eyes and focuses the last of his will on moving forward.

"Father? We're here." She's stopped moving. He lets her go and transfers his hand to the door.

"Father? Open your eyes. Please."

He presses on the door, leans on it. Takes two halting steps backward. Turns slightly to aim his left shoulder at it. Lunges forward.

"_Stop_!" She yells it as though she's the one curled up on the floor. The world is so hateful and ugly that the very air stabs his throat as he gulps it in and fights back to his feet. Stumbling, he throws himself at the door again.

"Stop!" She grabs his arm, the left one, the one that ends in boiled meat. He curses in a guttural snarl and jerks free. Once more he throws himself forward. He broke down a heavy-looking door this way, once. He'd been drunk. It had been his own front door. Which hadn't even been fucking _locked_ at the time.

He realizes the crucial differences between that and this. But he can't make himself stop. Not until Camilia grabs his left hand and squeezes.

"Goddamn it!" Haymitch roars in mingled frustration and rage and pain. He turns and backhands her across the face. He actually sets out to punch her, barely managing to uncurl his fingers before his hand smashes into her.

She backs away, staring at him fearfully. She backs clear up to the wall. He returns her stare, dully ashamed but still too angry to feel any regret. If she'd left him alone, maybe he could have at least knocked himself out again. The momentum is gone now, though; he's hurting everywhere and dizzy. He sits down in front of the door and then lies down and shuts his eyes and rides the waves of pain.

Tentative hands, light as the wings of venomous butterflies, touch his arm. "Father? Are you alright? I'm sorry."

"Get the fuck away from me. _Not_ your goddamn father," he growls. The touches stop and he's left alone in the red darkness.


	77. Compromising Pictures

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 77**

"Is he okay?" The voice filters through all that red half-light, muffled and distorted. It's like swimming in bloody water an unknowable distance below the surface.

"Sleeping," another voice mumbles. Haymitch tries to rouse himself, almost gets his eyes open.

"Looks passed out," Peeta says doubtfully. "Did the guards come back while I was gone?"

"No."

"What happened, Camilia? How'd you get that bruise on your cheek?"

"He hit me. He didn't mean to, I don't think. I accidentally grabbed his burned hand, and it hurt him- so he hit me."

"It's not your fault, Camilia." The voice is even and firm, and even with his eyes closed Haymitch knows the boy is crouching down to look her in the eyes. Peeta in reassuring mode. "He has a temper, especially when he's drunk. That's no excuse, but…" Peeta runs a hand through his hair, his 'what-to-do' gesture. Haymitch knows that one without looking, too. "Just try to keep clear of him, okay?" And then he says something that doesn't jibe at all with Peeta-being-reassuring. "He'll hit if you're right there, but he won't bother to come after you. Anyway, he probably can't, now."

Sitting up, Haymitch says, "Good advice. You sure you don't want to adopt Peeta as your father?"

Camilia doesn't reply in words, but the hurt in her eyes as she looks at him demands some justification. "Hell," he mutters, looking away from that reproach. "Seriously, why don't you? I almost certainly didn't father you anyway; and if I did, so what? It was an accident."

Peeta sighs and murmurs comfortingly, "Never mind, Camilia. He's drunk."

"Not drunk," Haymitch retorts. What's he supposed to say? "Sorry, girl. About hitting you. And- you can call me whatever you want." It's still not right. Camilia still looks like a kicked puppy and Peeta is still watching him like he's a dog who bit a kid or something. But he honestly can't figure out what else they want from him in this situation.

"It's okay," Camilia replies, touching her cheek lightly. "It doesn't even hurt… father." She looks at him tentatively, stepping away from Peeta. Haymitch nods at her, and she smiles with a sincerity that almost unnerves him and hurries over to sit beside him. She leans her little weight against his left side.

Peeta keeps his place, watching both of them with an unreadable expression on his usually open face. His broken arm has been casted and put in a sling. They must have plans for him that call for a reasonable degree of physical health in the future. Cautious hope rises once more in Haymitch. Maybe Peeta's meant to leave this place alive.

"I saw Rue," Peeta says.

"Is Prim still with her?"

"I didn't see Prim. I should have asked about her." Peeta glances anxiously at the door, as though the guards might appear at any moment. Which they might, but there's no need for Peeta to look so anxious. Next time they show up it will be Haymitch's turn.

"Well, is Rue okay?"

"Yeah, she looked fine. They only let me have five minutes with her. And they wouldn't let me hold her."

"Don't worry. They're not going to do anything to her. She's leverage." Haymitch looks down at Camilia. "Just like this one."

Peeta nods, no longer meeting Haymitch's eyes. "Yeah. I know. I need to know something, okay, Haymitch? Promise me you'll tell the truth?"

Haymitch casts him a wary look. There are a hell of a lot of things that Peeta is better off not knowing. And a few dozen more that are none of his damn business. "Ask your question."

Peeta looks back at him. "is there any point?"

Haymitch chuffs laughter. "To what? Life in general? Tough question, kid. Give me a minute."

"To asking you anything," Peeta says, not smiling. "Have you _ever_ been honest with me?"

"Oh, I figure we were in the vicinity about 40% of the time," Haymitch drawls, flashing his teeth in a non-smile.

That strangeness in Peeta's expression, the caution and distance, hold for a moment, charging the silence between them. Then Peeta breaks eye contact, looking down and again running a hand through his hair. When he speaks his voice is shaking and he sounds as upset as Haymitch has ever heard him. Peeta sounds like he's on the verge of tears.

"Please, Haymitch. I… I don't want to give up on you. Oh gods, my head _hurts_." Peeta sinks to the floor, his hand pressed against the right side of his head.

"Hey, kid, that's okay," Haymitch says, watching him worriedly. If they hit him in the head, he probably has a concussion at the least. He'll have to be kept awake. How long, though? "Come over here, okay?"

Peeta gets up clumsily and shambles over. He claims his place on Haymitch's right side and hunches forward, head hanging low.

"You couldn't give up on me anyway," Haymitch taunts lightly. "You're St. Peeta. Watching over us poor sinners in kind of your whole thing."

"They showed me pictures and film clips. Mostly of you. And Katniss. And they injected me with something. It burned. My arm still burns where they injected it. Mostly my head now, though." He shudders. "It was really bad, Haymitch. So… that's torture, then. They're actually torturing me. I really don't want them to do that again. The _beatings_ were better than that."

"Just go on and answer their questions," Haymitch tells him. "You don't know enough to make a difference anyway."

"Okay," Peeta whispers. He can't bear to tell Haymitch that he's pretty sure he already has. He doesn't remember very clearly what he's told them. He takes a deep breath and tries to steel himself for this. He doesn't want to ask. He doesn't want to _know_. But, oh gods, he has to know. "You and Katniss haven't been having an affair, have you?"

"Hell no. _That's_ what's got your panties in a bunch? She's a fucking kid," Haymitch protests, rolling his eyes. He's really not sure whether he should be pissed or just irritated as hell by the question. "I've never slept with a Tribute yet."

"She's not a Tribute anymore. And she's seventeen. And she's beautiful. And you two have always had this- connection."

"I didn't fuck her," Haymitch growls, belatedly thinking of ways to keep Peeta awake without talking to him. A hard cuff to the side of the head whenever he starts to nod off would do it, he figures.

"They had pictures."

"Pictures of our heads grafted onto no doubt nubile young models-"

"Katniss has a birthmark. And I could see your scars. The one on your side, and your twisted toes," Peeta says bluntly.

Haymitch ducks his head, feeling the heat rise in his face. That night will never lose its hateful clarity in his mind. He'll never not be a whore. It's just not something you can come back from. They probably have a goddamn video of that night. They could show it to Peeta. Then Peeta wouldn't just know the aftermath. Parts of the aftermath are just absent from his mind, like he had a black-out or something like it, and he has a few questions of his own for Peeta that he'll never ask.

"What happened to your toes?" Camilia asks innocently.

Peeta has drawn away from him in a disturbing manner, scooting around in a semi-circle so that he's facing Haymitch from a couple of feet away. He's looking at Haymitch dead-on, not hanging his head at all anymore. "He mouthed off to a client, and they broke his toes to punish him for it," Peeta says before Haymitch can even begin to think of a response.

"Oh," Camilia says, wide-eyed. "What kind of client?"

"Tell her that, too," Haymitch says lowly. "Don't stop now, you little fuck. Go on."

And then Peeta's back. It's like a light flashing on and off. He groans and rubs hard at his head and fixes scared, desperate eyes on Haymitch. "I'm sorry. I'm just so confused. It really _looked_ like you and Katniss…"

"Wasn't," Haymitch says shortly. He turns to Camilia. "I'm a- a prostitute. So. So that's what kind of client." It doesn't come out near as flatly as he'd meant it to.

"Oh," Camilia murmurs, seemingly at a loss.

"They didn't tell you that at the orphanage, did they? So how much faith do you really want to put in anything else they told you?"

Camilia looks around the bleak cell, no doubt realizing it's grown much too late for such considerations. If she's here because she felt she had something to live up to, she's thrown her life away for a lie.

"You'll be okay," Haymitch tells her. Children are so easy to lie to. "They'll let you go eventually and you can go back to District 4 and kick whoever talked you into this right in the jewels."

Peeta shifts and opens his mouth reflexively, then closes it without a word. He hunches over, cradling his head in his hands.

Time passes; it's impossible to say how much. The cell is lit by a single bright fluorescent bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling. It's never turned off. There are no windows, save the small mesh one in the door that's covered by a sliding panel on the outside. None of them talk much. Peeta tries to apologize once more, but he desists quickly in the face of Haymitch's cold, unassailable anger. He doesn't try again. He's constantly distracted by the pain in his head, like the worst headache he's ever had. He lies down some distance from the other two and rolls from his left side to his back because his brain seems to hurt less for a few seconds after he shifts position.

Camilia lays against Haymitch and shivers until she falls into a light, uneasy sleep. Haymitch isn't surprised. In spite of what she knows now, she's young enough to need physical comfort; and with Peeta rolling around on the floor like a poisoned hound, he's still the best option. It's a warmth-and-heartbeat thing.

Haymitch drifts in and out. His side and his ribs and his scalded hand and foot hurt. The scalded hand and foot most of all. He tries to watch over Peeta when he's awake, for what good that will do. He guesses Peeta is still the mission. Peeta and Katniss. Effie, if she's here and if he ever gets a chance to help her. Such a purpose he can understand and accept giving his life for. The so-called underground he's not so sure of anymore. If it's led by people like Plutarch, and if they took Katniss but abandoned Peeta, well, just who are these new masters, really? What are their real goals? Are they even trying to get rid of the Hunger Games, or is the whole thing just a would-be coup so someone else can sit in the mansion for a few decades?

"President Heavensbee," Haymitch whispers to himself, lips curling into a shadow of the old sardonic smile. "Sweetheart, I think we've all been had."


	78. There's No One Here to Help You

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: This is an M-rated chapter. Not for kids or the easily squicked.

Note2: Thanks for the review, SP! I don't know. People tend to be kind of myopic, especially when they're trapped in a nightmare themselves. Anyway, hope you like!

Note: Late again. Sorry. Just finished writing this one yesterday; and I like to take at least a day to mull over a newly written chapter before posting it, just to make sure it's what it's supposed to be and not too much the product of tired/stressed/tipsy. I'm going to try my best to be more punctual, but this is the first cycle where I haven't had several chapters ready to go ahead of time.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 78**

Effie sits in front of the mirror and pinches her cheeks, trying to give them a little color. There's no telling who will be visiting today, and she looks as worn and haggard as a woman from the outer districts. One twice her age. Who obviously takes no pride in her appearance.

Preparing to entertain guests used to be one of her little pleasures. And now, just look at her. For two weeks she has lived in this tiny three-room apartment under constant guard, only leaving to be questioned at all hours of the day and night. The water here only runs cold, making a bath impossible and a shower an ordeal. She has only two garments, both simple shift-style gowns in a drab brown color, along with several sets of underwear that they seem to be replacing once a week. Worst of all, she has no make-up and no wigs.

Most days she has a visitor, always someone she knows. Friends, acquaintances, rivals. The other Escorts are the worst. It had been Argentia from District 4 who'd told her that her visitors come not out of friendship or concern, but because they'd been ordered to; but Effie could have guessed. Even her dearest friends in the Capitol would think twice before paying a social call on someone suspected of treason.

For an excruciating half hour (the minimum amount of time they've been ordered to stay, as Argentia so gleefully informed her) she sits across a bare coffee table from them in her ugly dress, bare-headed and bare-faced, _ugly_, making forced conversation while they look anywhere else or stare at her gloatingly. She feels sick just thinking about these visits. Looking into the mirror now, she thinks for the dozenth time today that she'd never before realized how ugly she was, how laughable. No wonder she'd been assigned to 12. All these years, she's been part of the joke.

Mostly she thinks the visits are the worst things. The only time she feels differently is about three hours into the daily interrogations. There she fields the same questions in a never-ending loop, her back and her rear growing ever more uncomfortable in the hard wooden chair. She must maintain perfect posture throughout the sessions, back straight, ankles crossed, hands folded in her lap. If she slumps or leans to one side to try to ease the throbbing in her back, a voice thunders at her "_Posture_!" It isn't ever one of her interlocutors, so they must have a recording. The voice is loud and harsh and makes her jump every time before she straightens up again. If the voice yells at her more than once in a session the chair gives her an unpleasant shock, like static electricity.

The questions are about Haymitch and Katniss and Peeta. She's told them so many times that she knew nothing about any plot against Snow that she almost believes it herself. There are exhausted moments when it really seems plausible that she imagined that conversation in Plutarch's car. As far as she can tell from their questions, they think she knew Haymitch was working for the underground and simply turned a blind eye out of 'misplaced feelings' for him. They don't credit her with more than that. Thank goodness. Still, how long will the interrogations and the visits and her imprisonment here go on before they believe her? Is this going to be her life until she loses her senses enough to slip up and betray herself? What are they going to do with her? And if she ever makes it out of here, whatever is she to do then? Haymitch is dead, and they've clearly arrested Katniss and Peeta…

Just then there's the perfunctory double-rap of the Capitol Guard. Effie stands up, a hand going unconsciously to her lower back. That particular knock always means another interrogation.

The guard hands her a long, hooded black cloak so she can get from the building into the waiting car without being photographed and then gestures for her to precede him down the hall. Head bowed, Effie offers a subdued 'thank you' and goes with him unresisting.

She checks at the door of the interrogation room, staring in shock. There's only one man sitting at the table waiting for her instead of the usual four. That one man is President Snow.

"Come in, Euphemia. Sit down," Snow invites in an expansive tone, smiling disarmingly at her. He's immaculately dressed, as always, a pristine white rose fixed to the lapel of his coal-black suit. It's a jarring contrast to his surroundings.

Effie sits down across from him, blushing, unable to meet his eyes. "President Snow," she greets him formally. "How fare you?"

"I fare very well indeed. And how fare thee?"

"I fare well, thank you," Effie replies by rote. Unable to look down at her hands any longer, she fixes a polite smile on her face and forces herself to meet those sparkling eyes.

"You don't look well at all, dear," Snow says with genuine-looking concern.

"I apologize for my appearance," Effie flutters, blushing again. "They don't allow me any make-up, or wigs, or decent clothes. I'd never be seen like this if it were in my power to avoid it, of course."

This is dreadfully embarrassing, worse than that awful Argentia. Effie couldn't be more embarrassed if she found herself sitting before the president in her bra and panties. He must certainly be rethinking letting her be an Escort. Only beautiful young women can be Escorts. Snow knew her parents! He's known her since she was a child of only four. What must he be thinking, seeing her like this?

Underneath this frantic and distressed run of thoughts, barely rising above sub-consciousness, there's something else: hope, stirring again. Why Snow? She's never been brought to Snow before. Does this mean they finally believe her? She must be more convincing than she's ever been before.

"But you do have it in your power, Euphemia," Snow says, staring hypnotically into her eyes. "You could go back home this very day. You could have all your nice things restored to you. All you have to do is tell me everything you know about the treasonous activities of Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta. I know you weren't directly involved, and probably it didn't even seem very serious at the time. But now you must tell me everything. Take your time, dear." He leans forward expectantly.

"I don't know anything," Effie says, unconsciously squaring her shoulders. "I've always been loyal to the government of Panem. Why wouldn't I be?" She tilts her head slightly, looking back at him as though expecting him to answer her question.

"Haymitch Abernathy is dead, you know. He died of scaphism in the Town Square of District 12. Scaphism means they filled an open wound in his belly with insects and let them eat him alive from the inside out. It took him four days to die." Snow's smile has grown cunning as he watches Effie shrink back from the table. "I didn't order that. My orders were to hang him. But their Chief Peacekeeper is… over-zealous. I didn't stop it, however. Haymitch Abernathy was a traitor, part of a small group of radicals bent on destroying our way of life, perhaps even inciting a civil war."

"I don't know anything about that," Effie says faintly. She'd known he was dead, but she'd had no idea… _oh. Oh, no_.

"Would you like a glass of water, dear?"

"Thank you," Effie says unthinkingly, feeling light-headed. A moment later someone presses a glass into her hand and she takes several hurried sips.

"Better?" Snow asks solicitously.

Effie says nothing, but when she looks up at him her polite smile has bled away.

"Good. It would be most irritating to me if you were to faint."

Effie draws in a sharp breath. Snow's look becomes even more hypnotically intense.

"Love is a beautiful thing, Euphemia. Even when its direction is perverted. Even when a Capitolite woman falls in love with a district male. Love is beautiful, even then. I hope you enjoyed it. But he's dead now. Why throw your life away for what's already lost?"

"I didn't-" Effie starts.

"Didn't what?" Snow asks with the air of someone who already knows everything their companion will say. Probably everything she will think, as well.

"I didn't love him," Effie chokes, fighting back tears. For just a second all her masks slip and she looks at him with clear-eyed hatred. Has this old reptile ever loved anyone? She doubts it. Oh, she's been misled!

"As you like it," Snow says agreeably. "Are you quite certain you've nothing to tell me?"

"Yes."

"Nothing at all?"

Effie gathers herself. "If Haymitch and the children were planning anything, they never told me about it. And-" she lifts her chin "-only a monster would allow someone to die like that. A monster shouldn't be leading us."

"You're overwrought, dear. I'll give you some time to come to your senses." Snow looks past her and nods, signaling the guard to return.

Effie holds it together until she gets back to her three-room cell. She keeps the hood of the black cloak pulled forward and bows her head and bites the inside of her cheek. At one point she makes herself count the tiny lines that make up the fabric of the upholstery in the car until the rising headache makes her stop that. She must not think of Haymitch. Not until she's alone. _Wait, Euphemia. You're a lady. Wait_. The words come in her mother's quiet, soothing voice, and that makes it a little easier.

As soon as the guard locks the door behind her, Effie falls against the door and sobs her hurt and despair and loneliness. She'll never see him again. Somehow she's only just now realizing that in her soul. He died horribly, but what does it matter how he died, really? He's gone. "Haymitch," she whimpers. A tear trails over her lips and she tastes the salt of it. She has nothing now. She's completely alone.

He torments her now with a cruelty he never had in life. She can't close her eyes without seeing him: that appreciative up-and-down look she'd always scolded him for; the mellow, amused look he always had after the right number of drinks if nothing too bad had happened in the Arena that day; his overly gruff manner with the children that she would have liked to tell him wasn't fooling anyone. The way he'd looked asleep next to her in bed, stretched out on his side with one arm half-hiding his face, golden and beautiful and a little savage, a little dangerous. Even how he'd been when he got much too drunk.

When she first started working with him she'd been disgusted by the way he made himself sick with his vice, kept drinking even when it couldn't possibly have been pleasurable or relaxing anymore, until he was throwing up on himself. She'd been disgusted and angered and embarrassed, because after all, she was expected to keep him under control for those two or three weeks every year. But somewhere along the line it had gotten hard to turn away and walk out of the room without a word. She'd had to learn to 'be cruel to be kind'. If she fussed over him when he got himself into such a state she'd only be enabling him. But she'd always checked on him, after the attendants cleaned him up and put him to bed.

She remembers him in bed; and in the shower, and up against the wall. Mercurial, that was the word for him. Angry and aggressive and very nearly _too_ rough sometimes; slow and languorous and so focused on her that the way he watched her was almost as erotic as anything else in the offing at other times.

She'd loved him. She had loved him. And now look.

"Come back," she pleads, not knowing what she says. "Please just come back."

She makes her way to the narrow bed and lies down, staring at the wall through dazed and blurred eyes. She should never have gotten involved in Plutarch's schemes. She should have talked Haymitch out of getting involved. Why hadn't she at least tried?

There's a brisk double-rap at the door.

"Oh, not now!" Effie says wretchedly. She sits up, knowing he'll come in without waiting for her summons. She doesn't see how she can possibly endure another session right now.

Probably that's exactly what Snow intended.

Well, she'll cry in front of them, then. She won't be able to help it. But she'll tell them exactly what she's told them the last two weeks. Hateful jackals, she thinks bitterly, looking at the uniformed guard. Oh, I hate them. She's sure she never really understood hatred until today, how it shades everything.

"You were dishonest with President Snow," the guard says unexpectedly. "I'm here to punish you for that."

Effie stands up, alarmed. "I told only the truth."

"Take off your gown."

"I will not!" She's shocked. How dare he? How _dare_ he? She folds her arms tightly in front of her. "Leave at once, you impudent scoundrel!"

"If you do not take off your gown in the next fifteen seconds, I will take it off you myself. You do not want that to happen."

She's shaking, and she's appalled to find she's once more near crying. "Turn around," she says shakily.

"No. You have ten seconds."

Effie shudders and closes her eyes. "I won't do it. And if you touch me, the president will hear of it. President Snow used to take dinner with my mother and father. You had better keep away from me."

The guard waits impassively through this speech, and remains still for a few seconds afterwards. When he's sure she's done speaking he moves toward her, his eyes intent and his steps purposeful.

Effie utters a little shriek. It's purely involuntary. Then she turns to run. He rams into her from behind, pushing her face-down on the bed and planting a knee on her lower back. Effie writhes and shrieks, but she can't get away from him. The guard drags the hem of her dress up her legs and over her waist, then shifts around to straddle her before manhandling the dress up over her shoulders. "Put your arms up," he orders, and she hears the cheap fabric rip as he tries to pull it the rest of the way off. Crying, she spreads her arms out to the sides in a last effort to stop this. Then she feels something more horrible than anything that came before. He's hard. Gods. He's hard, and he's pressing _that_ against the seat of her underwear.

"Don't. Please, please don't," she begs.

"Then lift your arms."

She does it and the dress is rapidly pulled off her and tossed aside. Then he gets off her. She turns on her side, curling up, terrified and ashamed.

"Lie flat on your belly."

"Don't do _that_, please. I'll do anything you want. Just please don't."

"I'm not going to fuck you," he says, the crudity rendered more frightening by the lack of any change in his tone as he delivers it. He's speaking in exactly the same way as when he told her she'd been dishonest. "Now lie flat on your belly."

Thoroughly cowed, she obeys.

"This is going to hurt. You get fifteen lashes. If you get out of position, I start over at one." Something slashes across her bare back, and a second later bright stinging pain radiates out from the mark. A belt, or a strap of some kind. He's beating her. She can't actually believe it's happening until the third lash.

"Stop it! You can't do this to me! Stop!" she yells. Her voice jags and breaks every time the strap hits. And she doesn't move, except to jerk and curl her hands into fists. Because he can. Oh yes, he most certainly can.

She hasn't been counting; she starts to try to guess what number that was, but the pain of the next lash makes it impossible. "Oh, _stop_," she weeps. This can't be happening. She's a Trinket. She's Euphemia Trinket, a Games Escort. And this horrible man is only a Capitol Guard. He wasn't even born in the Capitol! "Ow!" she cries out, and then sobs. It has to be almost over.

The strap comes down on her lower back, her rear, her thighs. Then there's an abrupt clatter off to the side. Someone coming to stop this! "Help!" Effie yells.

He's on her. He's straddling her, his big hands pressing into her arms just below her shoulders.

"Get off me! Help!" Enervated by the arrival of rescue, Effie twists and bucks under the brute. They'll lock him up for this. They'll flog him. He'll never be a Capitol Guard again. Right now, Effie hopes they kill him. As soon as they pull him off her, she'll slap him. She'll grab the blanket to cover herself and then slap him across the face before she lets them take him away to his punishment. Her handprint will mark him first.

"Will you shut up, woman?" the guard grunts, his voice ominously rough. He shoves a knee between her thighs, wedging her legs apart. "Who are you squalling for, anyway? You think that sorry drunken pet of yours is going to show up and save you?" He gets his other knee between her legs. "We're all alone here, baby."

"No! Get off! You promised you wouldn't!" There's no one coming to save her. The clatter, whatever it was, was irrelevant. He beat her with a belt and now he's going to…

Effie bites her forearm to muffle her cry as she feels his hardness pressing against the seat of her panties again. This time she can feel- _more_ of it. He's taken it out of his pants so that only the thin cotton of her underwear separates it from actually touching her bare skin. She can feel its heat, and she shudders violently.

"Please don't," she begs, her voice quavering.

For answer he presses it hard against her, adjusting it, pressing the tip right over her center. She can hear him breathing heavily, like men always do, and for one horrible moment her mind conjures up Haymitch. She shakes her head back and forth, sickened by his appearance in her mind while this is happening.

"Told you, Princess," she almost hears him whisper. "That, times ten. For a start."

"Shut up, you're not _him_," she mutters fiercely.

At least the guard is too preoccupied to notice her words and draw any conclusions. He withdraws a little and presses up against her again. Then he's thrusting against her, her underwear still in place, humping her, going fast.

It goes on for about five minutes. One of his hands lets go of her arm and slides down to squeeze her bruised rear and she cries out in startled pain, too shocked and transfixed by what's happening to even realize he only has her pinned by one arm now. The hand rubs and squeezes lewdly while his hardness- his _cock_\- continues to press urgently against her, and neither is less obscene than the other.

Then he presses in even harder than before, as far as he can through her panties, and she actually feels it go _in_ a little, and she screams miserably. He groans, and she feels his mess soaking into her panties.

The guard gets up, and she listens to the rustle of his clothes as he arranges himself. Effie doesn't move. She's bewildered. No possible reaction has occurred to her yet.

"Thanks for the fuck, ma'am," he says sneeringly from above her, and lightly slaps her rear. Effie gasps and snatches the blanket, wrapping it around herself frantically, her hands shaking. "Maybe next time we'll get rid of those panties. Then we can really have fun."

He laughs as he lets himself out and locks the door behind him.


	79. Hangman

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 79**

It has been days since they've given Camilia any food. Haymitch would have guessed he's been in this cell with the boy he failed so spectacularly to save and the girl who is being starved to death at some kind of twisted stab at him for a week at least. But wouldn't a week without food have killed her already?

They're still jamming that damn tube down his throat periodically, which is even more fucked up now that Peeta's here to see. His throat is raw from it, leaving him with an ever-present cough. Frequently he tastes copper, sharp and acrid, and finds himself coughing up drops of blood.

They give Peeta actual food when they take him out for sessions. Peeta claims they do, anyway. He doesn't talk much anymore; these days his go-to reply is a curt 'leave me alone'. Which is really unfortunate, because Haymitch keeps thinking of new questions: What's in _your_ Red Room? Did they ask for your name and date of birth? Why so taciturn all of a sudden? (He grins thinking of that one.) And Peeta, just by the way, if you're the new me, then who's the new you?

The girl won't last much longer. He tries to think of her merely as 'the girl', rather than 'Camilia'. Especially he tries very hard not to think of the possibility that she's really his daughter. Like he told her, back when there was enough of her to hold down a name: so what? Some of his DNA, maybe enough genetic material mixed in to give her gray eyes, maybe enough-

Haymitch takes a deep breath because it hurts to do so and slowly lowers the hand that had been stroking the girl's hair to the floor. Maybe, nothing. She has nothing else in common with him. Gray eyes could be coincidence. Anyway, hers are blue.

She's been lying on the floor next to him for a long time, ever since he got back from the latest session. She'd have long since switched her attentions to Peeta if the boy hadn't abruptly ceased to be Peeta anymore. She comes straight to him whenever they bring him back and just sort of slumps down next to him, sometimes half on his lap. Haymitch accepts this quietly. Glaring pointedly at her hadn't worked. So, whatever. He deserves this wordless reproach anyway.

She stirs when he stops petting her, and Haymitch winces involuntarily because he can guess what's coming.

"Father?" she asks anxiously, her voice soft and raspy as a whisper.

"Right here. Go back to sleep," Haymitch tries futilely. The dread and the sorrow and the rage are waking up with her, wrapping him in bright tendrils like the web of some monstrous spider-

He shudders violently, almost jerking away from her, and Camilia opens her eyes and slowly pushes herself up on her little stick arms. "Father?" Fear lends her voice a bit of strength. Haymitch braces himself as Peeta turns over and sits up on the opposite side of the cell. That's what he does when Peeta wakes up, now. They've certainly come a long way, he marvels silently.

"I'm here. Hush," he tells her, even though it's too late in every way.

She looks at him, her expression confused and only half-awake. Then clarity descends like a heavy weight and she sighs quietly and pulls his right hand out a little so she can use it as a pillow as she sinks back to the floor. "Food?" she whispers; half-heartedly, Haymitch thinks.

"Sorry. Soon. I promise," he tells her again.

There's silence for a while, and he thinks she's gone back to sleep. He deserves the pins and needles in his one remaining hand, too. Haymitch leans his head back against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut and allows a hiss to escape between his clenched teeth.

"My stomach hurts. And my head. And I feel dizzy," she tells him or the empty air or whoever might help her.

"Yeah, I know," he says stupidly, uselessly. Then, just in case… well just in case, he adds: "My ribs hurt, and my side, and my hand, and my foot."

"Sorry," she murmurs, moving her head off his hand and back onto the concrete floor.

Before Haymitch can say something or put his semi-numb hand back, or just gather her into his lap because this is a lost cause anyway, Peeta speaks up.

"You're the most selfish, narcissistic man I've ever met." He says it in a tone of revelation, almost one of awe.

"Doesn't say much for your judgment that you're just now noticing, does it?" Haymitch replies with a spiky smile at the boy. He hauls Camilia bodily into his lap, unable to weigh the consequences of such a 'sign of affection' anymore. He has to use his right hand and left wrist, bending the cooked meat of that hand back as far as he can. It's not gentle, but Camilia doesn't utter a word of surprise or protest. She goes one better, curling up against him with urgent/desperate movements and gripping a handful of the cloth of his pants over one knee as though afraid she'll be shoved off if she loosens her hold.

"Fuck's sake," Haymitch mutters to himself. When _was_ the last time he did something that wasn't at least stupid, if not flat out destructive? Whenever it was, he's pretty sure Effie or one of the kids pushed him into doing it. Left to himself, he's basically one of those fabled chickens that stand out in the rain with their heads tilted back and their mouths open.

"I wasted so much time," Peeta says. "On both of you."

"Who the hell asked you to?" Haymitch replies lowly. He hopes Camilia didn't hear that. She shouldn't hear that she's a waste of time. Haymitch looks across the cell at Peeta, narrowing his eyes. "What the fuck's wrong with you, anyway? Since when has St. Peeta considered little kids a waste of time?"

"Not her!" Peeta exclaims. "You and Katniss!"

"Katniss?" Since when-?

"You know, I would have understood you two using me in the Arena, but you just had to keep pushing it. You had to see how much you could get me to fall for. Look where we are, Haymitch! And my daughter's here!" His voice is rising. Camilia shivers. "Look what you did!"

"Settle down, boy," Haymitch warns, bristling and trying to keep it out of his voice. "Katniss would have moved the goddamn mountains for you. She saved your life."

"Where is she now?" Peeta shoots back.

Haymitch has no answer. They must have tricked her somehow to get her to leave Peeta and Rue and Prim. But how can he say that here? What words won't just do more harm, maybe prompt more trips to the Red Rooms?

The door opens and a pair of guards looks in on them. Keln and Absom. A different pair always comes for Peeta. Haymitch feels himself tense in dread. Fuck. He's become terrified of these two thugs, and that's one more poisonous ulcer of shame he can't avoid. He's as big as Absom, a little bigger than Keln. They have their damn sticks, but he should still be able to fight them. Once he would have. There's just so much less of him now.

"Meal time again already?" he asks with a pretty poor attempt at non-chalance, shifting Camilia back onto the floor before they can haul him up and dump her. "Barely finished trying to sick up the last jug of that shit."

"Now that's an idea," Absom says, smiling nastily. "Maybe we'll mix a little in with your next helping. Would you like that?"

"We're going out," Keln says, gesturing for Haymitch to come to them. Then he shifts his gaze and says, "You, too, Peeta."

Peeta startles and looks up in alarm before scrambling to his feet. "Why? Where are we going?" He backs up against the wall as Absom approaches him. "Please don't cuff me," he begs, and his eyes drop as his shoulders slump.

Haymitch can read the familiar shame in every line of his posture as he begs Absom not to drag his broken arm behind his back. He grits his teeth. If he says anything, they'll only be more likely to cuff Peeta.

Is that shame just over being forced to beg? So far there's been none of _that_ since he got here, though it wouldn't surprise him a bit. That sick fuck Bacchus was set on him by Snow, and there was that thing with Camilia back before Peeta showed up. Hell, every fucking aspect of _that_ was a direct result of Snow.

He won't ask, ever. He looks hard at Peeta, trying to see it in his mind somehow. Would explain how he's been lately: the anger, the refusal to talk, the bit of irrationality about Katniss just now. Makes sense. Shit.

"I won't cuff you if you behave yourself," Absom says. "You're going to help the cripple walk." He nods toward Haymitch. "Get his arm over your shoulders so he can lean on you. Hurry up."

"I guess I don't get to use the cane anymore," Haymitch mutters, allowing Peeta to take his arm.

"Not today," Keln says. To Peeta he adds: "Mind you keep up, or we'll cuff you and he can crawl like the pathetic scumbag he is."

They walk faster than usual, just to be sadistic. It fucking hurts. He can put the left foot down, but the pain when he does so somehow scrambles the signals all up that leg. He's more likely to pitch forward than to take a step on it. Peeta breathes heavily and tightens his hold around Haymitch's wrist enough to leave bruises. Haymitch doesn't think he'll be able to manage his task long enough to get them wherever they're being taken. He thinks he's going to be sick.

When he sees their destination, Haymitch's lips curl into a smile. He unhooks his arm from Peeta's shoulders and stands on his own, albeit leaning a little. It's good enough.

They've arrived at the gallows, at long last. There's a platform with stairs leading up to it. A trap-door. And the noose, of course. Professionally tied thick rope, the slip-knot waiting to be pulled tight. On the floor in front sits a single wooden chair, festooned with straps and bolted in place.

There's a weight in the pit of his stomach, but he's only a little scared of this. He can hide it from Peeta and from them. Hell, this is nothing compared to last time. One noose, one chair. One to hang, one to watch.

"I warned you about blindly following that girl," he says resignedly to Peeta.

"What?" Peeta asks, looking at him in worried confusion.

"And I was the fool who didn't put a stop to it. Well, there's no fool like an old fool." Haymitch offers his right hand to Peeta, trying to think of something else to add. He can't lay it on too thick, or they'll see what he's doing. He sighs, allowing his eyes to stray to the waiting noose and then away sharp. He doesn't have to fake the edge of nervous tension he wants for this after all. Peeta hasn't taken his hand, so he lets it drop. "You know, when I was your age we vented all that naïve optimism by sneaking off to the Meadow at night." He stops again and darts another blatantly scared look at the dangling rope.

"Enough stalling," Absom says, grabbing Peeta's good arm. "Come on, boy." He pulls Peeta away toward the chair. Haymitch's shoulders slump in relief. Probably they'd already decided which of the prisoners was going to die today and nothing he said would have made a difference one way or another. But just in case, it couldn't hurt to let them think that Peeta knew more than him.

"Wait!" Peeta says suddenly. He pulls free and grabs Haymitch's right hand.

"Come on," Absom snaps impatiently.

"I've told you all I know!" Peeta declares. "Haymitch-"

Haymitch squeezes his hand, staring hard at him. _Shut up, kid_. It's glowing like a neon sign on Peeta's forehead, right out there for anyone to see. Peeta's going to try to turn his ploy back on him, make Haymitch look like the more valuable prisoner. Only it's not subtle, it's the complete opposite of subtle, and his next word is going to ruin everything, if he hasn't already.

At the last possible second, Peeta stops himself. He stares back at Haymitch, tears rising in his eyes. Holding on, he looks to the guards. "Don't kill him. I won't say another word if you do, ever. I'll starve myself to death."

"I wouldn't try the hunger strike thing," Haymitch can't help putting in with a wry twist to his mouth.

"Damn it, Haymitch," Peeta mutters.

"Come on, kid. Let go," Haymitch says, twisting his wrist to break Peeta's grip. He turns away quickly, toward the platform. "Little help, here?"

Keln helps him to the stairs and drags him up one riser at a time, pausing to let him balance on his right foot before dragging him up the next. By the time they get up there Peeta is strapped into the chair. Tears track down his pale skin into the start of a full tawny-colored beard. Haymitch studies his changed appearance, distracting himself. The beard makes Peeta look older, but with the shadows under his eyes and the way his cheek bones are just starting to stand out it's a sort of Ancient Mariner-esque, haunted-going-on-insane look instead of the hale-and-hearty look Peeta's father has. He tries to imagine what Peeta will look like ten years from now if he survives this. Twenty-seven, settled who-knows-where with Katniss and Rue and maybe a son to balance out the happy family picture, healthy and happy and safe, in his prime with maybe another twenty or thirty years stretching ahead of him. He has to end this quickly, now, before Peeta thinks of a way to 'save' him.

Then everything changes. Keln stops him at the corner of the platform, next to the lever that works the trap door. There's a shackle bolted to the floor next to the lever by a very short chain, only a few links long. "Hold still," Keln says, and quickly kneels and locks the shackle around Haymitch's right ankle, tightening it until it cuts into his skin. Haymitch squeezes his eyes shut and grips the lever to have something to hold on to. The steel circlet must have an inward pointing blade around each edge. He risks a glance downwards. Blood is already trickling down over his heel. The left foot has developed white circles, bordered by bright pink skin that shades into deep purple. His left hand looks like that, too. The pink and purple bits sting just from the air moving over them and almost make his eyes water if he knocks them against anything. Where it's white there's no feeling at all. He's pretty sure the white areas are spreading.

Keln presses a button on his radio and says, "Bring him in."

Two more guards come through the door, and they have Ryker Mellark between them. He's dressed in some of his own clothes: a nice suit, the sort of thing he once wore to weddings and funerals and Reapings. His wrists are cuffed behind his back.

Ryker catches sight of Peeta and tries to go to him. Held back, he call out, "Peeta!"

"Dad!" Peeta looks on in horror.

"Are you alright, son?" Ryker asks. Seeing the cast on Peeta's arm, he can't help flashing back to when his youngest boy was only four. He'd almost left Rowena that time. _What did she do to you, son?_

"_Dad_…" Peeta shakes his head. "I'm okay," he answers. "Are mom and my brothers alright?"

"Yes! Your mother's fretting a lot, you know, but everyone's fine!" Ryker looks eagerly at his boy, wanting more than anything to touch him, put a hand on his shoulder, reassure himself that he's really here.

Haymitch watches the reunion silently from his place on the stage, swallowing back the taste of blood and trying not to cough. He doesn't want to remind anyone that he's here. Maybe they'll forget. Maybe Peeta and the guards will forget him and the gallows and the noose and just leave, and this won't have to happen.

But the two unknown guards lead Ryker up onto the platform, past Haymitch and to the waiting noose. Ryker doesn't even notice him. He's still looking hungrily down on Peeta. He only looks away when they put the noose around his neck. He flinches at that and looks around quickly like one does on waking from a nightmare. Then he straightens up, squares his shoulders, and calls out, "Be brave, son! Take care of your mother!"

"I will, dad!" Peeta promises, deepening his voice to mask the tremor that wants to come into it. He'd protest, tell them his father is innocent, but they surely know that and this is happening solely because of him. He'd beg and promise to tell them everything, but that must not be the last thing his father hears. And he's already told them everything except for the fact that Haymitch had been the one to recruit him and Katniss. He'd said it was Plutarch, during their Victory Tour. The only new information he could offer them here and now would be that conversation in the tree belt outside Victor's Village. Can he condemn Haymitch to more torture to save his father? But they're about to kill his father! He looks up at Haymitch and sees the blood running down over his 'good' foot. And for the first time in days the nebulous darkness that shrouds every thought about Haymitch and Katniss flickers and then lifts as quickly as a curtain being pulled aside. He'd told Haymitch he was a selfish, narcissistic waste of time. Why? Why had he said that? And he'd actually told that poor little girl about the List. He'd deliberately tried to destroy her belief that her father was brave or noble or worthy of admiration. To say nothing of the cruelty of saying that in front of Haymitch. Is that how he reacts to pain and stress? Is that who he is?

"Pull the lever, Haymitch," Keln commands in a carrying voice. Even then Ryker doesn't look over to where Haymitch is standing. The dead man shows no sign that the name means anything to him. His eyes are already fixed on his final sight, the one thing in this room that matters more than his own life.

Haymitch's eyes are fixed in the same place. He watches the resolve and forced stoicism change to a harrowed look as Peeta turns to him. He watches the resolve crumble all at once. Peeta looks back to his father and starts to say something.

Closing his eyes, Haymitch pulls the lever.


	80. Tokens and Symbols

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review! Well, this chapter kind of has a happy ending. Sort of.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 80**

Trapped in the underground hive of District 13, Katniss bides her time with patience entirely unnatural to her being. They have her here, and they mean to keep her and shape her into the tool they've decided she must be. The only access to the surface that she knows of is constantly manned by two armed guards; and even if she could take them out, she doesn't have a hope of doing it before one of them hits the prominent alarm button right next to the portal. She could take her chances, use the at-most ninety second head start to try to get some distance away and hide until they stopped looking for her. Katniss shakes her head and mutters the verdict under her breath: "Never work."

She'll only get one chance. If they catch her and bring her back they'll watch her for weeks, for months. For far longer than Peeta has. In fact, they might just watch her until they get evidence that Peeta's dead. They've left him behind, discarded him, and they clearly mean for her to do the same.

Never. _Never_.

There's nothing for her here, nothing to hold her except the cold force of guards and locked doors. They want her to be some sort of mascot. No, not exactly a mascot: a symbol. 'The Girl From District 12 Who Dared to Defy the Capitol.' But she's not a mockingjay. It was only a pin, for god's sake! A last minute present from Madge, her _token_, something some old Gamemaker dreamed up to make the Tributes more interesting to their Capitolite audience. A more meaningful token than she'd ever suspected at the time, okay, granted. But she wouldn't have even worn it if she'd known it had once belonged to Maysilee Donner.

There's nothing special about her. She's not the strategist, casually playing people, manipulative and wily as an old fox. That part of her died in the square. She's not the courageous one, the eloquent one, the bright one with the unfailing kindness and patience and innate understanding of seemingly everyone he encountered. Peeta… Peeta might be dying even now, as they hold her prisoner here.

Haymitch had been too sharp-edged and surly to ever be the kind of symbol they wanted, or even a useful martyr. Katniss deliberately repeats that thought in her mind, hardening herself against the momentary pain. But they should have taken Peeta. Peeta should have been their priority, even if they could only rescue one of the so-called Star-Crossed Lovers. Isn't he the _boy_ from District 12 who dared to defy the Capitol? She'd held out the berries, he'd taken half; they'd counted together. Peeta had been so focused on her. In that moment Katniss had wanted a last look at the world, even if it was only the Arena. She'd taken in the trees at the edge of the clearing and looked up at the sky, and if she was thinking of home or of Prim or of her father, or whether or not this was going to hurt, she doesn't remember it. She remembers being startled when Peeta lightly touched her braid, being stricken by something she'd seen in his expression, an unidentifiable rush of emotion. _Three_.

Later she'd wonder if she could possibly be worthy of whatever she'd seen. And she'd remember that strange rush. It wasn't the first bit of reluctant liking she'd felt for him, but it might have been the first instant she'd ever _loved_ him.

Peeta should have been their symbol. He should have been. Not her.

Coin refuses to send a rescue mission. "The risks to our people far outweigh the chance of successfully retrieving Peeta." She says it calmly, reasonably, her tone denying that there's any need to get upset about this. No messy over-reactions, please. Surely you'll concede that I'm only doing what's best.

"So he's collateral damage, right?" Katniss asks, watching Coin closely.

Coin winces ever-so-slightly and then settles into a warmly sympathetic manner as she leans forward over the desk. "I'm truly sorry for your loss, Miss Everdeen. Help us take down the man responsible. With your help, we will overthrow Snow's regime."

"What about my family?" Katniss asks, ignoring Coin's attempt to redirect the conversation. "Let me go back to 12 and bring them out. I can get them past the fence. We could meet a rescue team in the woods."

Coin shakes her head regretfully. "The risk is too high. We need you, Miss Everdeen. Your family should be safe where they are for the time being. In all likelihood they'll be safer if you stay here and help us. If you return and are captured, Snow won't hesitate to use them against you. Soon we'll liberate all the districts, and I promise you we'll start with District 12."

She'd met with Coin on her second day in 13, and that had been fourteen days ago. Peeta's been in the Capitol dungeons for more than two weeks, if he's even still alive. And Katniss has been striking poses, delivering speeches, and putting on an elaborate costume designed by Cinna (who also apparently didn't make the cut of people important enough to be brought here). She's been attending strategy meetings that only concern themselves with roughing out her next speech and the backgrounds for the next set of photos. She's been attending vaguely patronizing classes like 'Remedial Sociology' and grating ones like 'Military Etiquette." And she's been practicing with a variety of firearms in the always packed shooting range. She'd never even held a gun before two weeks ago, but after a somewhat embarrassing start she'd found that she apparently had a knack for it.

And she's been doing one other thing. She'd made two conditions for her cooperation: Coin would take the first opportunity to send a rescue team after Peeta, and she got to take a daily walk outside. Coin had been happy to grant the first one, of course, which was really nothing. She'd hesitated over the second until Katniss had thought she'd say she needed time to consider it. But then Coin had suddenly acquiesced- as long as someone accompanied Katniss at all times. "For your own protection."

Each day Katniss walks around the forest outside the hive with her armed escort, deliberately staying close to the portal, always following the same path, trying in vain to detect any sign of relaxation in her minder. She's never been told it's time to go back in, but she limits herself to around twenty minutes and then heads for the portal with her guard trailing behind. Tame as you'd like. Tame as she can make herself look, anyway.

Then yesterday Plutarch had shown up to accompany her on her walk. He's appointed himself director of propaganda, and as she'd followed her usual path he'd plied her with flattery followed by several suggestions on how to 'be more convincing'.

Katniss waits at the portal, keyed up and watching the corridor. When Plutarch comes striding around the corner towards her she has to look away for a second to compose her expression. Alright, then. Today's the day.

"Ready for our stroll topside, Soldier Everdeen?" Plutarch asks, smiling encouragingly.

"Yes, Soldier Heavensbee," Katniss says with blatant irony. He'd tweaked her nose, the smug son of a bitch. Tweaked her nose and _laughed_ at her.

"Still sounds a bit strange, doesn't it?" he says as they step out into the sunlight.

"The propos?" she prompts in a mostly disinterested tone, starting off along the same path.

As she'd anticipated, he adjusts his pace to walk right beside her instead of following like the guard always did. Plutarch wears a gun on his right hip, ostentatiously, comically. He's walking on her left. One corner of Katniss's mouth twitches before she controls it. Not funny, she reminds herself. If he sees your intentions, or if he's faster than you are, you're in deep shit. And she's right-handed. So, maybe not as idiotic as he seems. Careful.

Sixteen days. And she can't be sure of another chance.

"I'd like to do a new series of stills, for leaflets we can distribute among the districts when we get ready to make our move."

"And when will that be?" she asks, looking over at him. "All these speeches and poses, and only District 13 to admire them. I think you've probably convinced District 13, Soldier Heavensbee."

"We'll distribute them throughout Panem soon," Plutarch answers, unperturbed. "The people here are our test audience. They tell us which spots and stills have the best mass appeal. As soon as we're ready, our first move will be to blanket Panem in our propaganda. Give them something to think about."

Katniss nods noncommittally, eyes ahead once more. "So- new stills?"

"Group shots. You and Finnick, Annie, Beetee, Wiress. Or maybe just you and Finnick."

Katniss snorts rudely.

"As I said, we'll see which one seems to have more-"

"Mass appeal, yes, yes."

"So you're onboard with that idea?"

"Sure."

"Good. We'll do those this afternoon." He lapses into silence. Katniss continues along the path. They're out of sight of the portal now. "I must say, it is nice to be aboveground for a change," Plutarch says. "I fear I may be just a touch claustrophobic. In the interest of-"

Katniss casually pulls the gun from its holster and side-steps out of his reach, not looking directly at him, like he might just go on talking and not even notice.

"Katniss?"

She wheels toward him, aiming the gun at his chest and clicking off the safety.

"Katniss, give that to me. Now," Plutarch says threateningly. He takes a half step forward. Katniss quick-steps back and instantly realizes her mistake as he comes at her, seeing in her retreat that she's more likely to turn and run or shoot wild or both than actually fire the gun at him. She pulls the trigger, but at the last instant she jerks the gun to the side. Plutarch freezes for a second, then grabs her wrist and twists it hard. "Drop it. Drop it now."

"_Ow_. You _fucker_," Katniss hisses in hatred. She socks the muzzle into his belly and pulls the trigger again.

The shot is curiously muffled, a flat bang instead of the thunder of the first one. Plutarch crumbles to his knees, clutching his belly and keening. Blood wells up between his fingers, around his hands, pattering to the ground like raindrops in a spring shower. That's what it sounds like anyway, as Katniss takes a giant step back and stares.

"K-Katniss," Plutarch stutters. "Get help."

"They heard the shots. They'll be along," she says flatly, realizing the implications of that even as she speaks. She takes another step back, then another, then turns to run. A dozen steps away, she checks and looks back at the bleeding man curled up on the dead leaves. "If you live," she says, not knowing if he hears, "remember this: that was for Haymitch, you bastard."

Katniss runs.


	81. Collapse

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review, and sorry this is late again. Three days this time, and I think that's the latest I've been yet. Well, now for something dark.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 81**

As Ryker's corpse dances below them, Keln unlocks the shackle from Haymitch's right ankle. He rubs one gloved hand roughly over the lacerated skin. Haymitch can't kick him, which is a damn shame with him so ideally positioned for it. He can't even take a step back, and he's using his right hand to hold onto the lever. Shit, no options. Nothing he can do but stand there like a cow in a stall. Which is the whole point, obviously.

Meanwhile, Peeta stares at the corpse with an almost expressionless mien. He wants very badly to hunch over, put his face in his hands, and shut this all off. But for the moment the straps prevent that. He should tell Haymitch he knows it wasn't his fault. But that heavy darkness has descended over his thoughts again, and he can't quite make himself say the words. It was kind of Haymitch's fault, wasn't it? No one had forced him to pull the lever.

And if it weren't for Katniss, none of them would be here in the first place. Quite a pair those two make. Yeah, he can kind of see why the- the _bitch_\- Peeta shivers convulsively and shakes his head (_no don't call her that_)- snuck off to Haymitch's bed whenever he fell asleep. Hell, they're practically soul-mates. The drunken fuck-up who gets his kicks destroying other people's lives and the girl who threw her own daughter to the wolves and hied off to safety on her own without so much as a 'good luck, been nice having a kid with you.'

Keln produces an actual fucking dog collar and Haymitch leans away (it's all he can do) and then rolls his eyes and lets Keln get on with it. He should be way more pissed about being used to kill Peeta's father than he is about one more small-minded, petty taunt. And yet-

There's a leash to go with it, and that's just about enough. Steadying himself on his right foot, Haymitch lets go of the lever and undoes the simple buckle on the collar. "The reason these things work, see, is dogs don't have opposable thumbs," he says sarcastically. "Didn't think this through, did you?"

"I think I've got it pretty much worked out," Keln returns. And he seizes Haymitch's right hand and bends the thumb backwards.

"Yeah, okay, point fucking taken!" Haymitch hisses. His left hand is useless, and it's all he can do to balance on the one foot. He can't even struggle anymore.

"Are you feeling helpless?" Keln asks, still bending his thumb back.

"Are you feeling strong?" Haymitch bites out, eyes narrowed in pain.

Keln just looks at him for a moment. Then with a sharp jerk and twist he breaks Haymitch's thumb. "Relatively."

Haymitch staggers, falls to his knees, then collapses the rest of the way down onto his side. His whole hand throbs sickeningly, his good hand, and he retches. He can't throw up, not with those anti-emetics they pump into his stomach, but a coughing fit takes him. By the time he can gasp in a lungful of air his mouth is slimy with blood and the floor in front of his face is speckled with it.

He pushes himself semi-upright on the heel of his right hand and spits blood onto Keln's polished boot. He _can't_ give a fuck anymore. He just wants to pass out so that this moment will be over and behind him.

Keln thrusts the boot towards him. "Lick it clean." And finally it's come back around to that, the kind of abject humiliation he'd gotten used to. Only getting used to that sort of thing just meant the humiliation became constant, no matter where he was or what he was doing, so that doing those things seemed- well, not okay, not acceptable, but just sort of something that wasn't worth fighting anymore.

Even now he can't say 'go fuck yourself', so he just bows his head and leans on the hand that won't support him much longer and waits for whatever pain is going to come next. And the worst part is, he'd probably fucking do it if the kid weren't watching. His hand hurts like hell, just about every damn thing does.

Keln's heel comes down on the spread fingers of his right hand, pressing them into the floor, not yet grinding and breaking them, just waiting. "I said, lick my boot clean, boy."

"Go ahead, then," Haymitch manages in a hoarse voice that's more apathetic than defiant. He coughs again, turning his head aside and spitting more blood onto the floor.

Keln lifts his heel without breaking any more of Haymitch's fingers. He stoops down and puts the collar back around Haymitch's neck and clips on the leash. Then Keln turns and walks toward the stairs, pulling Haymitch along by the neck. Being pulled forward, with nothing to hold onto for support, he can't get up. So he crawls, awkwardly, holding the left hand up and curling the right hand into a fist so the weight rests on his knuckles. Keln stops and waits at the bottom of the stairs, letting him take his time, a satisfied smile on his face. Absom joins them, walking along behind Haymitch. Haymitch doesn't look for Peeta. His mind is hazy, almost drugged-feeling, like the worst trip he's ever had.

They make him crawl all the way back to the cell, and into the cell. When Keln unhooks the lead he leaves the collar in place.

"The collar suits him," Absom notes approvingly.

"You don't touch that again, boy, understand?" Keln commands.

"Yeah, whatever," Haymitch says dully. Whatever, whatever, whatever. It doesn't hurt. Not like his hands both hurt, or his foot, or his ankle, or even the ever-present ache in his side. So… whatever.

Whether or not something hurts shouldn't be the only deciding factor in allowing it to happen. But, _hell_.

"Good. Feeding time, then," Keln says briskly.

"Where the hell is Peeta?" Haymitch asks, noticing for the first time that the kid's not here. Camilia's over in the far corner, where she always stays when Haymitch's guards are in here, per Haymitch's instructions. But Peeta's nowhere to be seen.

"He's spending some quality time with his own guards," Keln replies as Absom pulls Haymitch back against his chest and shoves his jaw toward the ceiling.

"Not near as much fight in him today," Absom sneers as Keln puts the muzzle in place and pulls the straps tight.

"I think he's pretty much broken in. Maybe they'll be able to find some other use for him after we're finished here."

Haymitch tries to jerk his head free at those words, thoughtlessly, reflexively. Absom's grip tightens and then the tube is being shoved into his mouth until he gags and then swallows, and by now the panic is muted and he breathes through his nose and endures it. Distantly he thinks he feels one of them stroking his hair, but he can't do anything to stop it.

They leave after that, done with him for the time being. Haymitch scoots over to the wall and stands slowly and unsteadily. So: the girl's nearly dead from starvation, Peeta's off being tortured at this very moment, and he just killed a man who had had kind of a key part in saving his life when he was sixteen.

"Hell, _that_ one came back to bite you, didn't it, Ryker?" he says, surprised to feel a flicker of weary amusement. "Gods, I am such a shit." He shakes his head. Painfully he hobbles over to the door and presses his shoulder against it, just in case. Then he turns back to Camilia, for no other reason than that she's here. "I don't think they'll kill Peeta. Why would they have bothered setting his arm?" he says to her, starting for the corner.

Camilia doesn't stir. He should shut up and let her sleep. But the dread is heavy in his abused stomach now as he watches her still form. "Camilia?"

She's cold. She doesn't move as he pulls her into his lap and wraps his arms around her. "Camilia?" he whispers. She just lies there bonelessly. Haymitch feel tears prick at his eyes, sudden and surprising. It's better this way; it's over for her. "Poor little mite," he mutters, his accent deepening, making him sound like old Fash. He's never spoken those words before, to anybody.

Morbidly, he wonders how long she's been… dead. Did she finish starving to death as they were force-feeding him ten feet away? What had she made of it, the way he was just skating up to the edge of 'gaunt' while she turned into a skeleton? Or, what if she'd died while he was busy hanging Ryker? Had she been scared at the end? Had she looked for him? Had she tried to hold on until he returned?

"I'm sorry," he whispers in her ear.

And- she twitches. Just slightly, a barely-there flicker. Haymitch presses the fingers of his right hand against the side of her throat, searching. It takes a couple of minutes to find it. His hand is shaking a little, hampering his efforts, and Camilia's pulse is faint and slow. It makes him think of butterfly wings, and he shudders and rubs at the scars on his side in an involuntary effort to brush off what isn't there. "Hell's bells, look at you," he mutters disgustedly to himself. "Almost forty-three years old and you're afraid of goddamn bugs."

Still alive, then. "Fuck," he opines. "Camilia? Camilia, wake up!" He gives her a gentle shake, but she doesn't even open her eyes. _Comatose_, his mind whispers.

She needs food. She's still alive. She can still be saved. She just needs food. Even in this moment, he recognizes the irrationality weaving itself through his thoughts. It just doesn't matter anymore.

Haymitch looks down at the dead meat of his left hand. He used to be left-handed. That used to be the one he threw punches with, and the one he wrapped around the hilt of a knife as he waited to pass out and sleep for a few hours. He lifts it up to his eyes, sniffs at the mottled red/purple/white skin. Doesn't really smell like anything. That's good, right? Next he presses his right index finger against the largest of the white spots, on the back of the hand at the base of his thumb. He can't press hard enough for his left hand to feel it. He slides the finger closer to the red border, wincing in anticipation. Yeah, still too painful to touch. It's like his fingertip is a red-hot wire brushing against the discolored skin. It's like it's still fucking burning.

The white areas, then. Haymitch brings the hand to his mouth, as though he means to suck on the burning skin to ease the pain. He bites down, jerks back with a vicious curse, and repositions his lower teeth so they're within the two or three inch white area at the base of his thumb. He barely feels even this, but the warm flow of blood tells him it's working. He bites down harder, grinding his teeth, trying to tear the tiny piece of flesh loose. There's an almost painless ripping sensation and then a sudden rush of light-headedness and queasiness. His hand throbs wetly, something like suspended pain, pain barely held back by a too-low dose of morphling when you know there won't be any more.

Something slimy and fleshy and horrible is in his mouth, and he spits it into his right palm as his left hand pumps blood onto the floor. It's a lump no bigger than an inch in diameter. Struggling to stay conscious, Haymitch drops it onto his knee and shakes Camilia's limp body. "Camilia, wake up! There's food!" She doesn't open her eyes, but that's okay. She's just weak and tired, of course she is.

Trying to ignore the wavering shadows encroaching on his vision, he gently pushes her mouth open. She still doesn't respond, but she also doesn't pull away from him or clench her jaw shut in protest of this intrusion. She understands that he has food for her now, just in time. She'll be able to eat the next- the next- the n-next_… She'll be able to eat_ on her own after this. She's just weak right now.

Haymitch puts the blood-soaked skin and bits of muscle and snips of vessels into Camilia's mouth and pushes her jaw shut. It falls open as soon as he takes his hand away, the offering falling to the dusty floor. Haymitch stares at the bloody lump for almost three minutes, shivering, zoning in and out. Then he picks it up and tries to feed it to her again. This time he holds her mouth shut and tilts her head back like they do to him, the way they force him to swallow the tube. Camilia twitches once more, then again, feebly. "Sorry, girl," Haymitch tells her. "Just this once, okay? Just- just this… once…"

A wave of dizziness hits him and he lays Camilia down quickly before sinking down next to her. His eyelids fall closed and he can't open them. Then he can't move at all.


	82. Gallows Revisited

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Thanks for the review! And I'm late again. Rough week. Rough week for a lot of us in this particular universe. Well, the next chapter, at least, will definitely be on time.

Note2: This one is M-rated for disturbing images.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 82**

The door to the room is red, and it's somewhere along the same hallway Haymitch had looked down on the day of his first interrogation. The number above the door is 22. An even number; he wouldn't know the significance of that, though. Even numbers are for primarily mental tortures, and some conditioning/retraining/brain-washing. Odd numbers are primarily physical tortures. Officially even numbers are designated Sophisticates; odd numbers, Brutes. This is still the Capitol, after all, even if the guards are drawn from the same academy in District Two as turns out Peacekeepers.

Inside the room there's a padded chair with so-called 'soft restraints': leather straps and cuffs with lambskin lining on the side that touches skin, secure enough to prevent escape even in the most violent of struggles or convulsions while at the same time preventing the skin from ever being broken. It's rare for there to even be bruises.

Peeta's broken arm has been a nuisance from the start. The orders on him specify minimal physical damage, at least until they determine whether the experimental hijacking procedure is going to work. Resh's former second, Graze, had screwed up a controlled beating with padded clubs, and something that should have hurt the prisoner and inspired terror in him as a crucial part of breaking down his resistance while leaving him essentially unharmed had necessitated a whole tedious treatment and new rules for how he could be restrained during the experiment.

There are pins in the bones, and the arm is now stable enough to be used in a pinch. Using it would be excruciating and it might not hold up to much. But they have to work with what they've got. When the time comes for the final stage of their plan for Peeta, if the experiment is successful, they'll treat the arm so that he won't notice the pain in it for a couple of days. He'll need both arms to carry out his role.

For now they've settled on a molded plastic cast that can be fitted snugly over his arm in place of the plaster cast, just while he's undergoing hijacking. It secures to the straps across his chest and prevents virtually all movement of that arm.

Next to the chair is an IV pole with two bags of fluid hooked up to a Y-connector that merges into the single tube feeding into the vein in his left forearm. One bag is just saline, a maintenance solution to keep the line open and ready. The other bag, bearing a red label, is the hijacking serum.

In front of the chair is a projector that generates a top-of-the-line image, 60" on the diagonal. There are speakers set around the room.

The IV is running. Peeta can feel the saline starting to flow. Just saline for now, but he knows it won't stay that way. His heart is already racing as he waits helplessly for it to start. Resh and Sparse are somewhere behind him, out of sight. The projector flashes to life.

Peeta recoils as much as he's able, face twisting in involuntary disgust. In this one Haymitch is with Snow. The setting is an opulent room that must be Snow's office or maybe a study in the presidential mansion. Haymitch is on his knees before Snow, and the speakers grotesquely amplify every wet licking and sucking sound. Snow leans back in his chair in a relaxed pose, his eyes half-closed as he enjoys Haymitch's ministrations.

"Enthusiastic, isn't he?" Resh remarks slyly from behind Peeta.

Peeta watches the scene play out, tense with building anger. He knows better than to close his eyes or look away. Any attempt to avoid watching the clips they play for him earns him a painful jolt from the shock wand Sparse holds. They shock his belly, his ribs, sometimes the side of his neck. They haven't tried… anywhere else… with it yet, but every time they use it Peeta is flooded with dread that they actually might do that, use it the way they did on Haymitch. He doesn't think he could bear that. So he watches, becoming more and more furious and disgusted with Haymitch. Men would be fine, whatever, but _Snow_? How could he? How sick and twisted would you have to be-?

_He's being forced, if this is even real_, another part of his mind asserts. It doesn't feel trustworthy anymore, this part of his mind. It feels like rationalization. It feels like a weak-sister part of his mind, desperate to keep making excuses so he can go on looking up to Haymitch as a smart, protective (if troubled) older brother. Worst of all, it feels foolish. But still it speaks. Lately it's like hearing a voice completely external to himself.

His left arm is starting to burn and sting, the rest of his body starting to feel warm.

"He's thirty-three years old in this clip," Resh informs Peeta conversationally, still keeping out of sight. "Seven years before he even met you and Katniss. But, old enough to know better, wouldn't you say? Maybe he just has _daddy issues_."

And the image changes abruptly to what happened today. Only, it seems different from how Peeta remembers it. For one thing, Haymitch is unrestrained as he stands next to the lever. He looks directly into the camera for a moment. He must have known where it was. The previous clip still fresh in his mind, Peeta flushes in embarrassment to find himself looking directly into those deceptive gray eyes. In the projection, Haymitch smiles and winks. One of the guards chuckles.

Then Peeta's father is brought in. Only this time he's casting around like a rabbit in a snare, lurching from side to side in blind panic, his eyes wide and rolling. The man in the projection sees Peeta and screams for help in a cracked and wavering voice. The two guards flanking him have to drag him up the steps to the gallows as he continues to beg his son to save him. When they force him straight so they can put the noose around his neck Peeta sees that he's wet himself.

Peeta shuts his eyes tightly. "No. That didn't happen. That's not real. He died bravely," he mutters to himself. "_It's not real_."

His whole body is burning up like the worst fever he ever had, only so much worse. He has a flash of a too-hot hand, and for a single second he seems to hear flames crackling nearby. A fever this high must be fatal. His arm feels eviscerated from wrist to elbow, his heart is galloping, it's hard to breathe. "I'd have saved you if I could have! It's not real! Stop!"

"Your father pissed himself like a five year old boy when they dragged him up there," a voice asserts firmly, the speaker inches from his ear. "But what else can you expect from a Districter?"

Then there's the horrible jolting pain across his bare ribs as Sparse runs the shock wand down his chest. "Watch the projection."

Peeta jerks in his bonds, not enough to get away from the wand (fuck, if it hurts that much on my _chest-_). A strangled cry forces its way between his clenched teeth. Panting, burning up, he rolls his eyes back to the screen.

Ryker is begging Haymitch for mercy now, hands outstretched towards the other man, face contorted as he sobs like a five year old boy. And Haymitch is laughing at him, that snide, mocking laugh Peeta knows so well.

"Look how he enjoyed the spectacle your father made of himself," Resh says indulgently, much like a man watching the antics of a favorite hound. "Remember the fuss _he_ made whenever one of the Peacekeepers punished _him_ for something?"

"Pissed his breeches every time," comes Sparse's gleeful rejoinder. "Even if it was just a few thumps with a baton for disrespect."

The words flow into Peeta's mind disembodied, seeming to come from all directions at once. In the projection, Haymitch is walking towards his dad. Dad gibbers with relief at his approach, evidently believing Haymitch is coming to free him in spite of the cruel smirk on his face. Haymitch limps a little, a slight turning inward of each bare foot so that he walks mostly on the sides of them. But the limp isn't even as pronounced as it was in District 12, when there were only the poorly healed toes to cope with. The burns on his left foot (which really aren't that bad, Peeta sees with dawning realization) don't seem to trouble him at all. The dirty bastard is _still_ playing him, exaggerating minor injuries just to see how much he can make Peeta fall for. It's the same game he's been playing since the day they met. Sickened anger competes with the shame and pity he feels for his father.

Haymitch reaches for the noose as though to remove it and Ryker grins ingratiatingly, hunching his shoulders and lowering his head and taking a tiny step toward his supposed savior.

"Doing everything but licking Haymitch's hand," Resh notes contemptuously, and Peeta's besieged mind instantly agrees despite his conscious effort to deny it.

Haymitch's hands (he's using both of them, of course) touch the noose, linger there, teasing his victim. Then his hands slide behind Ryker's neck and suddenly jerk the slipknot tight. Ryker yelps like a slapped dog. Haymitch laughs again and turns away to saunter back to the lever. Ryker screams. He makes several attempts to run, a couple steps in one direction and then in another, each time being brought up short by the rope.

Haymitch looks into the camera again, straight at Peeta. That sly smile twists his features again. It's an expression Peeta never saw before he ended up here in the Capitol dungeons, one Haymitch never allowed him to see. Oh, but the seeds of it were always there, especially when he laughed or when he flirted with Katniss right in front of Peeta. If only Peeta had allowed himself to see it earlier. How different his life would have ended up if he'd seen through both of them before it was too late.

With his father's frantic screams in the background, Haymitch finally speaks to Peeta. "Decided to accept your appellation of 'brother', kid. Thanks for that." The voice is entirely him, biting and sarcastic, jaded and amused, the drawl blurring the edges of the words to such an extent that Peeta can tell he's well on his way to flat-out drunk, just the way he likes to be. "Now, in the immortal spirit of Oedipus, I'm going to kill my father and fuck my mother." He smiles for a moment longer and then turns back to Ryker.

Eyes open, smiling easily, Haymitch pulls the lever.


	83. Pure Evil

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Sorry! Four days late. And I said it would be posted on time for a change. But my ancient computer finally gave up the ghost and I had to wait a few days before I could get a new one. So, here we are again.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 83**

Peeta decides he has to kill Haymitch. It's gotten late in the game, and Haymitch and Katniss have collected nearly all the pieces by now. They've got him trapped, and he's pretty sure this is check-mate. He can't escape from here. He has no way to protect his mother, or his brothers. He has no way to protect his daughter from Snow, although he's ready to give them anything they ask if it might gain her safety. But with both her parents gone, along with his own parents, just what would safety be for his poor, innocent child? Being raised by Elsabet, the mother of one of the two most deceptive, traitorous, selfish people he's ever known? His own mother's still alive, so far, but between her and Elsabet who would be the worse guardian? It will have to be one of his brothers, then. Peeta mentally adds the survival of at least one of them to the probably hopeless list of things he absolutely has to salvage from this.

He can't believe he was so completely fooled. He'd actually called Haymitch 'brother'. He'd done that while Haymitch was having a sordid little affair with Katniss and barely making any effort to hide it (well, they deserve each other). He'd brought Haymitch food almost every day, like the man didn't have plenty of money and two perfectly good legs to walk to Town on his own. How the two of them must have laughed over that! He'd taught Haymitch to play chess, and literally worried himself sick on more than one occasion over how 'bad' he was getting. For almost the whole time he'd known Haymitch, the other man had deliberately made him feel guilty over a made-up story about what was happening to him in the Capitol, a story that would have instantly been revealed as absurd if he'd taken a step back and looked at it objectively, even once. Haymitch, damn him, had _known_ he wouldn't. Manipulative _bastard_.

What had Haymitch really been doing every month in the Capitol? Nothing he didn't want to do, Peeta knows that much. Probably nailing beautiful women half his age, if he ever managed to leave the bars for long enough. That's if he didn't just go on and do them in the bars, maybe in the bathroom or something. Someone who would suck off Snow… Peeta consciously makes himself stop thinking about how Haymitch might choose to spend a week in the Capitol.

Katniss is beyond his reach, but he can still reach Haymitch. Killing Haymitch is the one thing he can still do to try to make up for his catastrophic naiveté.

They take him back to the cell. Before they open the door, Resh hands him a heavy steel pipe. Sparse has the shock wand out, holding it down at his side as he watches Peeta carefully.

"Haymitch killed the little girl," Resh tells him, looking intently into his eyes. "She wouldn't stop crying, so he bashed her head against the wall. I guess he was still amped up from killing your father."

"He…" Peeta trails off almost as soon as he starts to speak, a tendril of confusion germinating in the back of his mind.

"He, what?" Resh asks. "Were you going to say 'he wouldn't'? Are you still so naïve as that?"

"No," Peeta says firmly. "He's killed plenty of kids before." He looks down at the weight in his left hand, surprised for a second before he remembers Resh handing him the bar. He doesn't see Sparse tense and raise the wand a few inches.

"He's told us everything he knows. We're done with him," Resh informs Peeta. "Do as you see fit. Only, I don't know if I'd want to go to sleep with him in the same room, if I were you."

"Yeah. Okay," Peeta says, trying to think past the haze in his mind and the distraction of the guard's voice. He could use the bar on them and try to escape. But his priority now has to be Rue. They'd catch him and use the wand on him, maybe use it in that horrible way Haymitch had told him about. Haymitch had been lying, but they probably could use it like that. But more importantly, if he attacks the guards they might kill Rue. Her only chance lies in his cooperation.

But he will use it. He'll use it to forever remove one danger to Rue. He'll make it quick if he can, a few hard blows to the head. Haymitch won't even feel any of them but the first, and that only for a second before he loses consciousness. In spite of all Haymitch has done to him and to those he loves, Peeta has no desire to make him suffer. He just really needs to see him dead.

He thinks at first glance that they've given Haymitch a shirt. Then all he can focus on is Camilia. She's lying sprawled half on her back, half on her side next to the wall. The side of her head that Peeta can see is caved in, the blond hair completely darkened to muddy red clumps. There are whitish flecks throughout the drying blood, and Peeta's first sickened impression is that they're maggots. Then he realizes they're different sizes and irregular shapes and not moving. He realizes he's looking at pieces of Camilia's brain. Above her, right about what would be chest height for Haymitch, the wall is splattered with blood that streaks all the way down to the floor.

He'd picked her up and swung her at the wall, keeping hold of her ankles, smashed his own daughter's head in just to silence her crying. He's not selfish, or manipulative, or just and asshole. He's something else entirely. He's pure evil. Peeta has got to kill him, right now.

Haymitch is sitting up against the wall, looking at his handiwork with an absolutely flat expression, neither gloating nor satisfied nor guilty. Least of all horrified. What Peeta had taken to be a long-sleeved shirt is actually some odd kind of restraint. Haymitch's arms are laid across his lower chest and apparently strapped into place there. His hands are covered by the sleeves. A strap goes between his legs, too. Bizarrely, he's wearing a collar.

Shaking off his shock over the girl and Haymitch's indifferent attitude towards her, Peeta starts toward him. The restraints will make this easier. He doesn't really want to fight Haymitch any more than he wants to torture him. Not that there'd be any doubt of the outcome: Haymitch is unarmed, after all. But he's quick as a rattlesnake.

Haymitch looks up at the sound of Peeta's footsteps, apparently noticing him for the first time. Calculating eyes take in the raised steel bar before searching Peeta's face. Haymitch says nothing, but Peeta sees him push himself back against the wall with his right foot.

"Hold still. I'll make this quick," Peeta says, standing over him.

"Well… _thanks_," Haymitch says, and even though his voice is reduced to a gravely rasp he manages to make it drip with accusation.

"It's better than you deserve," Peeta says. He raises the bar over his head and brings it down with all his weight behind the swing.

At the same second, Haymitch's right foot sweeps out and knocks his good ankle out from under him. Peeta crashes forward, dropping the bar and colliding face-first with the stone wall. There's a wet crunching sound and dazzling pain fills his head. Blood streams down into his mouth.

"You wanna think about it for a goddamn second?" a gruff voice asks.

Peeta's hand flies to his broken nose and then away again at once. "Murdering bastard!" he yells, looking around furiously. Haymitch has scooted a few feet away and is trying to get up so he can knock Peeta down and get on top of him. Peeta snatches the bar and swings it into Haymitch's ribs.

Haymitch falls onto his side, a choked spluttering grunt coming from him as he coughs up blood. Standing over him again, Peeta lays into him at random, a rain of hard blows that keep him down and keep him from kicking again. Now that he's started, it doesn't occur to Peeta even once to aim for Haymitch's head. He just wants to get this over with. So he brings the steel bar down again and again, hip, ribs, thigh, ribs, ribs, shoulder, lower leg.

"Die, you bastard, die!" Peeta screams, half-maddened. Still the figure curled on the floor jerks with each blow, sometimes uttering its own wordless cries. Why won't it just die? This is horrible, but Peeta can't stop now. If it had just held still-

_The boy sure as hell isn't making this quick. Guess you made the little fuck mad,_ Haymitch notes blearily. The thought floats through the wavering, darkening red sea of his fading consciousness, surprisingly intact, a rarity, so he tries to hold on to it. Haymitch feels his lips twitch reflexively as some worn down circuit in his mind clicks over and he has a weak, brief memory of dark amusement. It brings none of the old 'fuck it' pleasure or relaxing of tension at all, no sense of 'same old shit'. Fuck _it hurts fucks it hurts fuckithurts_. This single thought plays on a loop that won't stop until he finally dies (would if I could, you little fuck), occupying his entire consciousness. He doesn't want to move, even if it were still possible to move. Every few seconds, too quick for him to even catch a breath in between, something heavy and hard crashes into him, something he's beyond the ability to identify. He can't even think (_fuck it hurts_) where he is or who he is or what's happening, it's beyond him, he doesn't even remember the questions. He doesn't identify this as dying. All it is, in its entirety, is pain and a loop of meaningless sounds, or the shapes of sounds.

Someone grabs Peeta from behind and he spins and strikes wildly at them with the bar, screaming. Then he's face-down on the floor, they're on top of him, holding him down and wrenching away his weapon.

"No!" Peeta howls in a voice that sounds completely insane. "It's not dead yet! Let me go! Let me go! It's not dead yet!"


	84. Fair Trade

Disclaimer is attached to first chapter.

Note: There will be a new chapter posted tomorrow.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 84**

Coin bows her head over her steepled fingers for just a second, sighs very quietly. Then she looks up. The ten remaining members of her advisory board look back at her from their places around the table. They all look worried. And most of them look pissed.

"Suggestions?" Coin requests evenly.

"Continue as planned," Romanesco says, almost before her word is complete. "We have several film clips of the Mockingjay already, and almost two dozen posed stills. We can synthesize additional material from those and from Capitol-filmed footage. We don't need the girl."

"And what will pictures and film clips avail us when it becomes known that we no longer have her? If she's going to attempt to rescue Peeta Mellark, she will be either captured or killed outright. All we would be able to offer was that we had had her for a while. And even that the Capitol would try to discredit. Manipulating old footage of her would only lend credence to their claims." Coin finishes and dips her chin toward Romanesco, inviting a reply if he has one. After several seconds of silence she sweeps her eyes around the table. "So, unless we recover Everdeen, we cannot go forward with the propaganda campaign as it was originally envisioned. Other suggestions?"

"Are we certain she has gotten out of the search range?" Spring asks, looking at her neighbors on either side. "As resourceful as she is, she's still only a teenage girl. At best she has a gun, the clothes she was wearing, and possibly an amount of food small enough to hide in her pockets. It's over forty miles to the district border. Perhaps she's gone to ground somewhere and is only afraid to return because of Heavensbee."

"The parties continue to search; but if she truly does not wish to be found she probably won't be, unless someone finds her body in a few weeks after she's starved to death. We cannot beat our way through every thicket and climb every tree looking for her, and Everdeen is quite capable of making a lay-by. Do you have a suggestion?" Coin prompts.

"Widen the search perimeter. She can't possibly walk forty-one miles through wilderness with no survival training and virtually no supplies," Spring asserts.

"No, we shouldn't endanger our people searching for a girl who has already killed one of us," May speaks up. "She may not even come back peaceably if we did find her."

"Three miles is far enough to send our people," Thomas agrees. "I say we write Everdeen off."

"At this point I am inclined to agree," Coin says, reclaiming the floor. "It is only a sorry reflection on our district that she was allowed to escape in the first place. Well, the one responsible for that lapse has more than paid for it."

There are nods and rumbles of agreement around the table.

"If we did get her back we'd have to lock her up anyway," May says. "It would hurt our people's morale and endanger discipline to let her crime go unpunished."

"Better if we don't find her, then," Thomas says.

Spring shrugs slightly and says nothing further.

"So we're starting from scratch?" Romanesco asks.

"It would seem so," Coin says with just a soupcon of apology in her voice. "And if we cannot have Everdeen, perhaps we should consider Mellark."

"How? He'll be in the Capitol dungeons," Mays points out.

"How is young Miss Snow?" Coin asks. She directs the question to Farr, who has thus far been observing the conversation with his usual air of thoughtful silence. She speaks to Farr but everyone else go very still. There are several uncomfortable looks, for this is not a name to be mentioned lightly. Or at all, if it can be avoided.

"Progressing according to plan," Farr replies almost too quietly. "She cries a great deal, including in her sleep. She made a third attempt to refuse her meal yesterday, but the usual methods of persuasion were quite effective. She's still coherent, more or less, if she's spoken to calmly and from a distance of no less than ten feet. She repeats herself multiple times and has developed a stutter, but she's understandable. Get any closer and she devolves into crying and cringing. About half the time she shrieks just from casual touch, on the shoulder for instance."

Coin holds up a hand to stop him. "It's well enough." The plan for Cordelia Snow is not an easy one to think about. It's a closely guarded secret, known only to the men and women in this room and the two men under Farr. Snow would not be moved by videos of the girl looking well and calm, nor by threats to kill her if there was any attack on District 13 or infringement on their territory. Plutarch had confirmed that for her, but Coin had really only needed to watch the archival footage of President Snow to know it. He would write the girl off as a casualty of war. He might regret doing so, but he would never allow her to stand in the way of the destruction of a threat to his regime.

Not if they played fair, anyway.

But maybe if the girl was visibly falling apart, if she was terrified and sobbing in the transmissions they sent to Snow, if she shrank away from her captors, if she was actually being driven mad by the conditions of her captivity, maybe that would make enough of an impression on her possibly sociopathic grandfather. Perhaps he wouldn't be able to countenance it. Perhaps he'd be rendered so desperate by the sight that Cordelia would become a crucial bargaining chip, safeguarding District 13 from attack and gaining them priceless advantages throughout the revolution to come.

If it worked that well, the girl could be made temporarily 'sane' again with sedatives and coached through new messages to demonstrate that she was being treated better in return. Meanwhile, the terrorized version would be ready for a comeback at a moment's notice.

Of course, even this might fail to reach Snow if he truly was a sociopath. Or he might respond by immediately launching an attack. But even if he will not bargain for her safety, it can be hoped he will at least be significantly distracted and made reckless by the tactic.

Coin does not know the particular methods Farr and his men are using; only the three of them are privy to that information. She could know if she wished, but she sees no advantage in it. Certainly it will be unpleasant and troubling, but it can't be helped and she has other things that require her constant attention. They are to inflict no physical damage that will result in permanent disability. If Cordelia makes it through the war, there are drugs to make sure she forgets the particulars. There's also at least one posh mental institution in the Capitol, if she needs it and if it's still standing at that time. She will be taken care of.

That was the plan, but things have changed since Everdeen decided she'd rather run off on a suicide mission than do her part for the Resistance. Coin folds her hands on the table-top as if in prayer. "I'd like to propose a new plan for young Miss Snow," she says, enunciating the name deliberately and waiting for at least a few of them to meet her eyes. "Perhaps we should trade her for Mellark."

"Is Mellark really more valuable to us?" Romanesco asks. "The girl is our safeguard against attack."

"Possibly," Coin corrects. "We still don't know if that plan will work at all, or to what extent. Remember who we are dealing with. Mellark can be spun into as inspiring a figure as the Mockingjay. We'll put out that Everdeen insisted on leaving 13 to rescue her beloved, unable to endure life without him. We'll say she led a rescue party to the Capitol dungeons. Tragically, she was captured in the effort. She sacrificed herself for her true love, Peeta Mellark." Coin looks at each of them in turn, her voice and expression earnest, showing them what this could be, what they could make this into.

"Would Mellark cooperate?" May wonders after a moment of silent consideration by all.

"Heavensbee claimed he's less stubborn than Everdeen, and more level-headed. In any case, we will take no chance on him escaping."

"It's certainly better for Miss Snow," Spring notes. Everyone except Coin affects not to have heard her.

Coin acknowledges the fact with a nod to Spring. "Would anyone else like to add anything?"

There's silence all around.

"Very well," Coin says. "Farr, work out Miss Snow's part of the video. I will tape my offer this afternoon. Your charge may precede or follow, as you like. Have her piece finished no later than 2100. We will send the transmission to Snow's mansion at 2300. Dismissed."


	85. The Gift

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Next chapter will be up on New Year's Eve.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 85**

The transmission ends. Snow raises an eyebrow at the desktop projector, now sitting quiet and innocent. He can't replay the transmission because they were at least clever enough to encrypt it against being recorded. That's a pity. He can't quite make himself believe that District 13 offered to trade Cordelia for Peeta. It's just too perfect.

The woman- President Coin, as she's pleased to call herself- wants to meet in the outlands between District 5 and District 11. Not that she'll be coming in person, of course. Opposing sides face off at a distance of about thirty feet. Hostages are walked to the midway point by a single escort. They trade and walk back, and everyone gets into their hovercraft and flies away. She hadn't gone so far into fantasy as to call it a gesture of goodwill, but she might as well have.

And this offer couldn't have come at a more opportune time. The hijacking treatment works perfectly. Peeta had even accepted a post-hypnotic suggestion that he shouldn't hit Haymitch above the shoulders, and that had been a last-minute add-on with no real object other than to see if it would work. Since then they've been focusing heavily on Katniss in Peeta's sessions. The teenager hates Katniss even more than he hates Haymitch.

Now if 13 would just offer to send Finnick and Wiress and Beetee back. They could keep the others, and welcome to them. Well- he'd like to have Katniss back, of course. But they've erroneously decided she's important, so there's really no chance of them handing her over so easily. Her punishment will be the same as the punishment for any uncooperative Victor: he has her mother and her sister and her brat, all waiting his pleasure in the dungeons with Peeta's mother and brothers. And, if the opportunity to reclaim her ever presents itself…

As to the others, he's already taken care of their unfortunate families and they weren't particularly useful anyway. Why anyone should care to burden themselves with a hopeless neurotic like Annie Cresta is one of the fripperies of human nature he'll never understand. But Finnick was very valuable, still a favorite among the Capitolites long after the novelty of a new addition to the List usually wore off. Beetee had his devotees, but more than that he and Wiress had been responsible for more than a dozen technological breakthroughs since Wiress had become a Victor. Wiress is beyond usefulness for the List (females are retired at 45, males at 55) and a basket-case almost of Annie Cresta's caliber on her own, but as a team they've done better than any of the Capitol-born techies in Snow's employee.

Perhaps Coin would trade at least one of those three for Haymitch?

Snow shakes his head even as a pleased smile curls his lips. That's too much stupidity to hope for, even from her. Why would they want Haymitch, especially the way he is now?

But… _they can have him_. The epiphany occurs to Snow in a flash of brilliance.

Even without cracking his skull or breaking his neck, Peeta had done a passable job on him. He's been unconscious ever since, lying all unknowing in a bed in Victors Hospital. Snow wonders if that mind is still active at all, somewhere down deep. And if it is, is the boy reflecting on how much better off he'd have been if he'd just contented himself with the many privileges of being a Victor, List and all? Did it ever occur to him that any of the males who spent six days a week in 12's mines would have given their firstborn child to trade places with him? Perhaps he should have been married and bred years ago. It would have given him more incentive to behave himself and keep to his place. Snow pulls his blotter across the desk and jots a quick note to consider new policy vis-à-vis the Victors. But that's for later. Coin will be wanting a reply.

Could he trade Katniss's family, or Peeta's, or their brat, for someone more valuable? Katniss will certainly want all of those. But Katniss isn't calling the shots, and better not to offer at all than to offer and be turned down. If those few Victors are out of reach, best his enemies believe he doesn't care to have them back.

An hour later Snow stands in a small room in Victors Hospital, looking down at Haymitch's remains. The room is stiflingly hot. There's a blue plastic tube protruding from Haymitch's mouth, connecting him to a ventilator. The IVs are back in his arms, sedative running into the left and nutrient soup into the right. By chance, Snow has visited during feeding time. A third IV on the left side of his groin transfuses synthetic A positive blood.

Haymitch's left hand is wrapped in a thick layer of gauze and tape. It's the only part of his body covered by bandages. His grotesque left foot has swollen during the three days he's spent flat on his back. The rest of his skin is nearly as discolored as his foot, dark bluish gray and rusty red. Where's there's internal bleeding the patches of dark purple have distinct edges. There are three of these patches, all on his abdomen. The bag his catheter run into is half-filled with bright red piss. Indentations on both sides of his chest mark stove-in ribs. His right shoulder is dislocated, and by now the joint has swelled so much that it can't be popped back in. The top of that arm rises a good three inches above the level of his shoulder. His left ankle is broken.

"Would he survive unhooked from the ventilator and all of the IVs?" Snow asks the medic standing unobtrusively in the background.

"Do you want him to be recovered again, sir?" the medic asks. Compared to the scaphism, bringing him back from a beating that left his head and spine undamaged will be easy. How many times can a man be recovered from the brink of death? This will be the fourth time for Haymitch. And what effect must that have upon the mind? The subject is a Districter, so exact parallels with Capitolites can't be drawn; but even so a study on him would yield so much useful and fascinating data!

"He's to be a gift," Snow replies without turning around.

"Sir, if I might offer a suggestion, he could be of great use to us here at Victors Hospital. An idea has just occurred to me for a study on the limits of survival. It would also provide experience for the new medics." He looks hopefully at the back of Snow's head. Snow is still gazing down at the subject; and then one of the president's hands floats out and touches the golden hair, starting to grow out again and clean for the first time in weeks.

"You do not want me to repeat myself, Guallen," Snow says, idly petting Haymitch's hair and watching it gleam under the bright, hot fluorescents.

"Sorry, sir," Guallen says promptly, all business now. "The nutrient IV can go anytime, of course. He could breathe on his own. He has five broken ribs, but none of them have punctured his lungs yet. It's likely they would do so if he tried to roll over or sit up. The sedative is to keep him still. It's a high enough dose to potentially cause respiratory distress, so he's on the ventilator as a precaution. Both could be detached if we taped and braced his ribs and restricted his movement. If the blood was stopped he'd last about 24 hours, give or take half a dozen, before he bled to death.

Snow doesn't know what sort of medical facilities 13 has, if any. So best not to give them a challenge they probably can't cope with. "Stabilize him. Stop the bleeding and assure that he doesn't kill himself the first time he tries to get up. Then wake him. Leave the burns and his shoulder and his ankle as they are. He's to have no painkillers, but continue the minimum maintenance dose of alcohol. He can go back to the force-feeding method he's used to. His guards will be coming to work with him. They're to have complete privacy and any assistance they request. Have him ready for them within 48 hours. Do you understand, Guallen?"

"His guards? Are coming here?" Guallen asks, as though confused by this.

"He's to be a gift," Snow repeats slowly. He finally turns to face Guallen. "The recipient has particular tastes. All you need to worry about is stabilizing him. Don't concern yourself with the guards' business."

Guallen swallows, then nods. "Yes, sir. Only-"

"Only?" Snow prompts, wondering if this man appreciates how easily he could be destroyed.

"Only he won't be up to much," Guallen says in a rush. "If they're, well, too rough with him…"

"Don't let that concern you. Just _do… as… you're… told_. Won't you, Guallen?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, while you're stabilizing him you will personally position these two devices in his body. You will send everyone else out of the room while you do it. No one will see the devices or know about them but you. So if anyone else finds out, you will be the first person the Capitol Guard will question." Snow hands over a palm-sized case to Guallen, who takes it with a distinctly unhappy look. "The larger one goes inside one of his cervical vertebrae. Make an incision through his skin and push the sharp edge between two of his bones. It will fix itself into place. Remember to remove the scar. No one is to know it's there. The smaller one is to be inserted into his right forearm via the same method utilized to place the Tributes' trackers. If you have questions, ask."

"What are they? The smaller one looks like a standard tracker, but I've not seen a device like the larger one before."

Guallen will have to go. Disposing of Capitolites is something Snow does sparingly, but Guallen is too curious. He's been warned twice in the last ten minutes to mind his own business, and yet he persists.

"Do as you're told, and don't let anyone else find out," Snow repeats. "You will be held accountable if anything goes wrong." Snow leaves him with that, knowing full well that Guallen believes it was only his job that was just threatened. He'll have to set a tail on the man until the operation and dispose of him quickly after that. No one must know, and a single question or speculative remark just might ruin this whole plan.

Keln and Absom display the attitude Guallen should have had, despite being from District 2 instead of Capitol-born. They stand at attention in front of Snow's desk, Absom behind and to the left of Keln, both slightly awed by their surroundings and by Snow himself.

"Be careful of his ribs. The rest of his body should require no particular caution. In six days he will be sent elsewhere." Snow pauses, offering them rope, but both guards decline to hang themselves. "He's going to be conscious and he's going to have a better than even chance of survival. But he will be very damaged goods. You will have four days to work on him. Drive him out of his mind. On the last day he's to be taken no less than twelve times. Do some of it yourselves or call in other guards to help or use tools, whatever you like. I do not care how it happens, so long as it does. At least twelve times in that one day. Make sure he stays conscious during. He is to leave Victors Hospital terrified and humiliated and clinically insane- useless to his new masters. And it's going to be impossible for him to hide what happened from them."

Coin's people will think he was sent to them in such a condition as revenge against Katniss, or in hopes of breaking the girl's will. If they suspect any other motive, they'll find the tracker in his arm and remove it and think they've neutralized the threat. The bug in his spine shouldn't show up on any scan they can perform. It will pick up and transmit not only Haymitch's location but also anything said within about thirty feet of him, or in the same room if there are walls in the way. Maybe Katniss will pour her little heart out to her old Mentor, if Peeta doesn't manage to kill her during their first encounter.

All this, and he also gets Cordelia back. Alone in his office, Snow smiles to himself. He'd actually forgotten about Cordelia for a while there.


	86. A Song in the Dark

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: Dark themes in this one. Lots of graphic torture.

Note2: Next chapter will be up tomorrow.

Note3: I make extensive use of the traditional song 'Haughs of Cromdale' in this chapter. I substitute 'Sassenach' for 'English'. It may be ancient history, and Panem's schools might not be too keen on that subject, but I still feel that the word 'English' would be too obvious.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 86**

Sharp, stinging pain on the back of his neck, like something being slowly pushed into his flesh, the pain getting deeper. Feels like a long, thick needle, or maybe some kind of tube. He can't move, can't even cry out for it to stop. Is he paralyzed? If he's paralyzed, why does he feel everything? There's only darkness, but he can't tell if his eyes are open or not. Paralyzed and blind, wouldn't that be something?

The fuck was it _for_? Haymitch guesses Peeta did this because of the execution thing. The killing-his-father-right-in-front-of-him thing. But still- Peeta? There's disbelief in the thought, and not a little betrayal. Something damn close to anguish. Stupid, but it's there.

There'd been his own kid, too. Camilia. His daughter. He'd done nothing to protect her. And then they'd-

In the corridors of his mind he confronts Peeta over and over. Sometimes the kid has a club, sometimes his weapon is an axe. He can't even talk to him- the hell would he say? He's not used to feeling so- _perplexed_ by the things he encounters in here. Peeta raises the weapon and advances on him, and perplexity turns to icy fear, a fear overlaid with shame. Peeta, fucking Peeta, the goddamn _kid_, is going to beat him.

The hell with _that_, he forces himself to acknowledge, wanting to back away, unable to move. He already fucking _did_. Then Peeta is upon him, the club that sometimes flickers into an axe descending.

And there's a horrible bloody crunch as Absom slams her head into the wall. There's also, and this is so much worse, a single mewling cry, like a damn kitten. She'd been conscious! Oh goddamn, fucking hell, she'd been conscious! He twists in the straitjacket but he can't move, Keln holding him down with a heavy hand on his shoulder. He begs for the first time since the fuckers did his hand and his foot. Too late.

Could he have stopped them if he'd begged sooner?

Almost before he's awake Haymitch begins to twitch and then to cry, almost silent sobs that are barely more than gasps. It's involuntary. His left ankle seems to be filled with ground glass, and every breath he takes stabs at his chest. The feeling radiating down his right arm is indescribable; the phrase 'white hot' seems to be as close as his mind can come to naming it. Everything else aches and throbs miserably.

A soft cloth dabs at his face. "There, there. It's only your shoulder, and your chest, and your ankle, and your hand, and your foot. You're fine."

"He's already broken," another voice says, almost sullen in tone. "What are we supposed to do with him now?"

"Are you awake? Or are you just crying in your sleep?" Keln asks. He wraps one gloved hand around Haymitch's left hand and squeezes it.

With an effort, Haymitch finally manages to get his eyes open. "Leggo," he slurs, hearing the tears in his voice. Shit. Why can't he just die?

"Now, that's not very polite. Absom and I came all the way out here to help you," Keln says in a mockingly solicitous tone.

Haymitch closes his eyes again and turns his face away. The last time he saw Keln and Absom, one was slamming Camilia into the wall of his cell while the other held him down on his knees. And he'd let them put the damn straitjacket on him. He hadn't wanted to provoke them while Camilia huddled in the corner ten feet away. Or maybe he'd just been too goddamn scared of them to fight it. They'd made him crawl down the hallway on a fucking leash.

The grip on his hand tightens. That's the only warning they give him. Then there's sharp agony stabbing down his thumb and he gasps and tries to pull free of Keln and of the straps keeping him in the bed.

Keln is pushing a needle under the nail of that thumb, levering it like a crowbar as he loosens the nail. He works it slowly from side to side, watching the nail darken as the blood collects under it. "There, there. Almost done," he tells Haymitch. He withdraws the needle and pulls the thumbnail away like a wet decal, dropping it to the pillow in front of Haymitch's pale, drawn face.

"The fuck do you _want_?" Haymitch asks. He's never felt less like fighting. There's nothing left to fight for, anyway. Which makes all this shit pointless. And all the shit that came before this.

"Only to help you. You look like you need help," Keln says. He shifts his grip on Haymitch's hand and begins working the needle under the nail of his index finger.

Haymitch tries to think of something else, anything outside this room. They may be doing this just out of sadism. In which case, nothing he can say or do will stop it. He's no more than their toy.

Groping blindly, his thoughts turn to Peeta. He's going to punch the little fuck in the goddamn jaw if he ever sees him again. And then maybe punch him in the gut. He can say with considerable certainty by now that that's the second worst place to get hit. And then maybe just kill him.

It's hard work thinking around the feel of the needle, exhausting work. Pathetic fantasy, anyway. If he doesn't die of his injuries, which sure as hell _feel_ mortal, and if Keln and Absom don't torture him to death in this room, he'll still be a prisoner. He'll go back to the cell. And Peeta will do it again. He deserves this, anyway. Everything that's happened over the last couple of years, to him and to Katniss and even to fucking Peeta, all of it happened because he let it happen.

His attempts at self-distraction are abruptly ended by Absom grabbing his jaw and roughly turning his face back towards Keln. "Don't you care what's done to you anymore, then? That was only the second nail, in case you've already lost count. You have eighteen more."

"What do you want?" Haymitch asks again. Then, unthinkingly, he begins repeating it. "What do you want what do you want what do you want what do you want what do you want what do you want…"

"He's completely out of his head," Absom snorts disgustedly.

"Not completely," Keln returns. He begins working on the middle finger with his needle. "Hush, Haymitch."

Haymitch shudders and tugs uselessly at the strap over his right wrist. He doesn't want to move the left hand. Hurts enough just keeping it still. A fresh wave of queasy pain travels down his right arm at the movement and he goes limp. Can't move that one either, then. Can't move. As Keln pries the third fingernail off his hand he turns his face away again and closes his eyes tightly.

"Stay with us," Absom says, passing a vial of smelling salts under Haymitch's nose. Haymitch jerks away from it and turns half-lidded eyes on Keln.

"This hand is a mess, you know," Keln says conversationally. "First you made us boil it; then you tried to eat it, and I just wonder how many years you have to spend at the bottom of a bottle before _that_ seems like a good idea. And now… well, if we decide to let you live for any length of time I'm sure it will have to be amputated."

The hand is useless anyway. That's what he tells himself. Who gives a shit? But to have them actually cut it off… Chaff got on well enough. But, fuck, he doesn't want to be maimed. He's already maimed, sure, but he still_ has_ everything.

The pain in his left hand is building again, reaching towards a crescendo, and Haymitch suddenly looks directly at it for the first time since this latest torture session started. He has to make sure that his hand is still there. One long-ago night in a Capitol bar, both of them three sheets to the wind, Chaff had told him it still hurt sometimes. His hand. The one he no longer had. So Haymitch has to check, because pain is no guarantee.

The sight terrifies him, because somehow he wasn't prepared for this. Keln is working a long brass needle back and forth under the nail of his third finger. Blood is oozing out around the needle. The exposed nail beds of his thumb and first two fingers glisten wetly, fresh blood covering the ends of his fingers. There's blood all over the white sheets, too. Keln moves the needle and one of the two remaining nails on his hand half-rises before being lowered again. The needle resumes its side-to-side movement. The bandage has been removed and the horrific sight is finished off by a deep open wound near the base of his thumb, a roughly circular pit in his flesh with the white glint of bone showing through. Haymitch yells, almost screams, at the sight before he can stop himself. Amputation. Yeah. It'll have to be. If they make him live.

"There you are. Finally realized this is really happening?" Absom asks cruelly.

Are there bugs in it? Could the white glints have been maggots? _Don't scream. Don't cry_. But tears are already running down his cheeks.

The fourth nail falls into the bloody pile in front of his face with an echoing click. "Hurry up. I want my turn before he goes catatonic or something," Absom says impatiently.

"Do you have anything to tell us, Haymitch?" Keln asks. "Anything that may have slipped your mind until now?"

Haymitch nods. "Yeah."

Keln sets the needle down in a steel tray and looks at Haymitch expectantly. A quasi-pleasant smile contorts his lips. Absom moves in closer from the other side of the bed.

Haymitch gathers his thoughts, shuddering at the unrelenting pain. "As I came in by Auchendoon, just a wee bit frae the toon, tae the Hielands I was boon tae view the Haughs of Cromdale," he confides, the old and archaic words slipping smoothly off his tongue despite the years since he last spoke them. Meant to be sung, of course, but he doubts he could sing right now with what feels like every single rib broken.

"Where's Auchendoon?" Keln asks, squeezing his mangled hand again.

"Short distance from Town," Haymitch says, almost, _almost_ smiling.

"In District 12? Section 18?" Keln presses.

Haymitch winces. "Yeah. Ease up a little there, killer. I'm talking, aren't I?"

Keln exchanges a look with Absom. Haymitch takes note of it and decides to press on before they have too much time to think about this.

"I met a man in tartan trews. Speired at him what was the news. Quoe he, 'The Hieland Army rues that e'er we cam tae Cromdale."

"Why are you talking like that?" Absom asks.

"It's just dialect," Keln says dismissively. "The herds in the outer districts barely speak English among themselves." To Haymitch he says, "Tell me more about the Highland Army."

"They sure as hell regretted the business at Cromdale," Haymitch replies, back to his normal, slightly drawling accent. "Can't you fucking let go?" He twitches his left hand, failing to achieve any finer control over it than that one spastic jerk.

Instead of letting go, Keln seizes the needle again and jams it under the last remaining nail. Haymitch howls and jerks violently at it. Doesn't help. The straps hold him down and Keln's grip on his hand only tightens as he pries at the nail much more roughly and quickly than he'd done the others. He drops the bloody thing onto the pile on the pillow as Haymitch quivers and pants.

"Now, tell me about the Highland Army," Keln says implacably.

"W-what? Oh. Oh, right." Breathing heavily and feeling his ribs grind together with each inhalation, Haymitch dredges through his memory. "We were in bed, sir, every man, when the Sassenach host upon us cam. Bloody battle then began upon the Haughs of Cromdale."

"So, you are a member of the Highland Army?" Keln asks.

"Yes," Haymitch says, wondering what Absom wants to do. Because they'll catch on soon. And why the hell is he bothering to stall? Going to end up at the same place, anyway. Screaming while Absom tortures him in some yet-to-be-revealed way. Screaming and crying and knowing Keln will be up again next. And can whatever Absom has in mind possibly hurt as much as what Keln just did to his hand?

"And who are the Sassenach?"

"Our enemies," Haymitch says. "Loyalists."

"Write this down, Absom," Keln says, his eyes shining with eagerness.

"The Sassenach horse, they were sae rude. Bathed their hooves in Hieland blood. But our brave clans, they boldly stood upon the Haughs of Cromdale."

"Continue," Keln prompts. At least he's let go of Haymitch's hand. For whatever that's worth.

"But alas, we could no longer stay, and o'er the hills we cam away. Sair did we lament the day that e'er we cam tae Cromdale. Then up the Great Montrose did say, 'John, Hieland man, show me the way. I will o'er the hills this day and view the Haughs of Cromdale."

"Montrose is the leader of the Highland Army, is he?" Keln says with satisfaction.

"Yeah. The Great Montrose. Long Live," Haymitch says with a defiant air. Then, just to sell it, he lifts his head and spits in Keln's face.

Keln holds up a hand to keep Absom back, calmly wiping the saliva from his face with the other hand. Lucky bastard still has two, Haymitch thinks with bitter humor. "What is John's full name?"

"John Rand," Haymitch says the first name to come into his mind. Sure as hell hope there isn't some poor devil in 12 who actually has that name. But they're going to see through this any minute now, so it doesn't matter.

"They were at dinner, every man, when the Great Montrose upon them cam. A second battle then began upon the Haughs of Cromdale. The Grant, Mackenzie, and Mackay, as Montrose did they espy, 'twas then they fought most valiantly upon the Haughs of Cromdale."

"Grant, Mackenzie, Mackay," Absom mutters as he writes down the names.

Not letting himself stop to think, Haymitch plunges on. "The MacDonalds they returned again, the Camerons did their standard join, Macintosh played a bloody game upon the Haughs of Cromdale. The Gordons boldly did advance. The Fosters fought with sword and lance. The Grahams they made the heids to dance upon the Haughs of Cromdale. Then the loyal Stewarts wi' Montrose so boldly set upon their foes. Laid them low with hieland blows. Laid them low on Cromdale."

"So the Fosters are illegally manufacturing weapons, as well," Keln says, nodding. "Read off that list of names, would you, Absom?"

"Grant, Mackenzie, Mackay, MacDonald, Cameron, Macintosh, Gordon, Foster, Graham, Stewart." Absom ticks them off and then looks up.

"Is that everyone in the Highland Army?" Keln asks Haymitch. "Who else is involved?"

"No Abernathys in it," Haymitch mutters. "I guess even back then we didn't amount to much." The ruse is up. He doesn't know of any Mackenzies or Mackays in 12, but there are damn sure MacDonalds. Stewarts, too. This is going to be hell. "It's a song, you fucking morons," he says. "An illegal song. My uncle taught it to me ages ago, but he was very explicit about what all would happen if I ever got caught singing it. I never even got around to teaching it to Roen. But yeah, it's a fucking song." He smiles into Keln's shocked, furious face. "Hundreds of years old. You _morons_."

Absom is the first of the guards to speak. "Not so broken after all," he says, stepping forward. "But we'll soon change that."

Haymitch closes his eyes and tries to brace himself. "Fuck's sake, boys. Learn to take a joke."

"Oh, there you mistake the situation, Haymitch," Keln says, almost directly into his ear. "This is no joke."

Absom comes forward, and he's holding a knife. The blades flashes in the light of the overhead fluorescents. "But it was a pretty little tune. Let's see if you know any others."

"No," Haymitch says to himself. "That's probably it."

Then the knife bites into his upper chest, near his right shoulder. Haymitch jerks and bites down convulsively on his lip. He tastes blood and feels it dripping down the sides of his face, marking out red lines on his cheeks. _Okay. S'okay. It's just a knife. And it's your chest. Good location. They'll either kill you or the worst it'll leave is a scar. Just a knife. You can do this_.

He doesn't know where the reassuring inner voice comes from. He'd thought anything like that in his mind had long since died. But he grasps it tightly, balling his right hand into a fist, and begins forcing that tiny reserve of strength to serve his turn. He's got no other choice. So what comes next doesn't matter. Just get through this.

It's not as bad as what Keln did, not after the first shock. Haymitch looks off into the distance and focuses as much as he can on his breathing. Absom isn't stabbing him with the knife. He's just cutting the skin with it, over and over. And the longer he does that, the longer it will be until Keln does something worse.

Haymitch keeps zoning out, going into a dazed state where he stares unseeingly. He wouldn't even be aware it was happening if Keln didn't keep pulling him out of it with the smelling salts.

"Make sure they're deep enough to hold the filler," Keln says. And the word 'deep' makes sense in this situation, but Haymitch is unable to put any meaning to the rest of it. When he tries, the words flee his mind in seconds.

"Yeah, make sure they're deep," he utters hoarsely. Deep sounds good. Even if it doesn't kill him, enough blood loss will grant him a reprieve from this. And if they return him to the cell, he's pretty sure he can get Peeta to finish the job.

Unwanted clarity, like a shaft of sunlight in a dust-shrouded attic, lances through his mind at the thought of Peeta. Is he still alive? Are they doing this shit to him? Maybe if Haymitch keeps them busy there'll still be time for the kid to be rescued. Katniss would never abandon Peeta. Of course, if she's nothing but a powerless figurehead in District 13… then no one's coming. Peeta will die. Just like Camilia died.

And- and, shit. Peeta. What the _fuck_? Haymitch takes another breath, feeling his broken ribs shift unnaturally with the rise and fall of his chest, feels for a crushing second the overwhelming pain in his right arm and his left ankle that he'd somehow shifted to the back of his mind until he remembered Peeta.

_Let the little fuck die, then._ There's no one left to protect, no purpose to all this unending shit anymore.

"Looks good. I think we're ready for the wax," Absom says. And then Haymitch does scream, as something viscous and hot flows over the open cuts that stretch from one shoulder to the other. He lifts his head, unable not to look. Absom is pouring a black fluid over his chest in a thin stream, directly into the wounds. So the marks will be permanent.

"Candle wax," Keln tells him, and he cups the back of Haymitch's head and holds it up so that Haymitch can keep watching. "It'll stop the bleeding, but more important it creates very distinct and permanent marks. They'll be raised and black, if you live long enough for them to heal."

It hurts much more than the actual cutting did. Haymitch tries to jerk his head from Keln's hand, but Keln has his fingers laced through his hair. "Watch, Haymitch. Being branded is a milestone. You'll want to remember everything about this."

The word stirs something in his mind, and Haymitch's right hand twitches. For the first time it occurs to him that his left hand and wrist no longer have white glittering roses on them. That was his branding, and they burned a hell of a big portion of it off. Both his hands have been mutilated for over a year now, and burn scars are better than those tattoos. If they don't just cut that hand off.

Absom sets down the pitcher and begins brushing the excess wax away before it can harden.

"Hold up a mirror. Let him see," Keln says, still keeping ahold of Haymitch's head.

Absom holds up a mirror, and Haymitch winces away from the man he sees in the glass. Face pale and haggard and streaked with blood and tears, hair hanging in sweaty clumps, eyes wild and glistening. He's a wreck, about ten seconds away from bawling or screaming or both. They've destroyed him.

Then his eyes move to the word written in large black letters across his upper chest: TRAITOR.

"For the rest of your life, no matter how short or long it is and no matter where you end up, everyone who looks at you will know just what you are," Keln says.

He lays Haymitch's head back down on the pillow. "Alright, let's get you fed. And then I'm going to use these," Keln picks up a pair of heavy shears and clicks them in front of Haymitch's face, "to cut off all ten of your toes."

"I don't know anything else!" Haymitch says desperately. "I've told you everything!"

"We know," Absom says deliberately. He turns to get the familiar force-feeding apparatus.

"You'll need to be sitting up a little for this," Keln says, pressing a button on the side of the bed. Haymitch gasps and curses as his back is pushed up by the rising bed. "Wouldn't want you to aspirate, would we?"

He keeps passing out while Keln is using the shears. Every ten or fifteen seconds Absom rouses him with the salts and there's a few seconds of pure agony. He doesn't scream anymore. He can't breathe. Then he slips under again.

When he comes to the next time Absom holds a syringe up in front of his eyes. "Stimulant," he says. "Should keep you awake for at least the next couple of hours."

"Shit," Haymitch says miserably.

"Could be worse," Keln tells him. "I'm finished with your toes. Want to have a look?" Without waiting for a reply, he pushes the button to raise the head of the bed. Haymitch barely feels his broken ribs this time. He can't really feel anything except his feet. Everything else seems to be slightly numb. He looks down at what remains of his feet, wishing he could throw up and ease the sudden queasiness in his stomach.

The left foot looks dead, like something on a rotted corpse, except for all the fresh blood. Wherever the skin shows through it's bruise-colored or fish-belly white. It'll have to be cut off. No way he'll ever be able to use it again.

Fully half of his right foot is swollen and red. It ends abruptly in a row of blackened bumps: the remains of his toes.

"This ends with you two killing me, right?" he asks when he's able to speak.

"Do you want us to kill you?" Keln asks.

Not knowing how to answer that, Haymitch remains silent.

"Maybe we will kill you. Or maybe we'll wait another couple of months, or another couple of years. Maybe we'll even give you a couple of prosthetics and make you into an Avox. Would you think yourself fortunate if we let you live as an Avox? At least you'd be alive, after all, and all of _this_ would be behind you."

"Just do whatever the fuck you're going to do."

"You don't care anymore, is that it? But what if we just- let you go? Sent you back to District 12? You wouldn't have Katniss or Peeta anymore, and you wouldn't see Effie Trinket again. And you'd go back on the List, if anyone still wanted you. And we would make sure you never dared step out of your place again. We could do that easily. But, you'd still have your drink. And so long as you behaved yourself you'd be free. The life of a Victor is not such an uncomfortable one, is it? Better than being an Avox. Better than being _here._"

Like hell. He knows damn well they're teasing him. There's no getting out of here, not as an Avox and certainly not as a 'free' man.

But despite that he finds himself running it over in his mind. And suddenly he feels like he'd give anything to just be back in the Village, midway through a bottle or maybe just finishing his first, feeling dull and drowsy and disconnected. Feeling okay. Nothing hurting too badly for the alcohol to take care of. It'd be like before the kids came along. He got by, didn't he? He'd been constantly drunk, and most of it had felt like just waiting for time to pass, another day and another night. But he'd been doing fine before he met the kids.

But he'd had Effie. Only for a couple of weeks each year, but he'd almost come to look forward to the Games. He wouldn't have admitted it to himself, not back then. It would have been too great a betrayal, and he didn't need another source of self-hatred. But Effie had come to almost balance it out for him. There were moments of misery and rage and feeling so worthless and powerless; but once Effie appeared there'd been moments of genuine laughter, and good-natured sparring, and just sitting back and admiring her when she wasn't looking, and concern for something that wasn't just going to die. Hell, there'd been actual happiness in scattered moments.

Before Effie he'd had two other Escorts, and he'd learned to hate and dread the semi-sober state he forced himself into for a couple of weeks each year. If that was what it was like to be fully aware of the world, why even make the effort? The world- past, present, and future- was shit, before Effie.

And what if they've killed her? He can't ask. He can't show any concern for her. For a moment, he imagines her starving to death, having her skull bashed in. So, he doesn't let himself react at all when Keln says her name. And maybe all that means is that she's been moved to another district, or she's not allowed to be an Escort at all anymore. But what if it means she's dead?

And of course, before he met the kids there was no List, not for him. How could he do any of that again, now that there's no one left to protect apart from himself? He couldn't. But they wouldn't let him stop. They'd use the wand again, and then they'd probably just flat-out rape him. Balthamos would eventually torment him into a state where he'd go along with the whole thing again, if Haymitch didn't manage to kill himself first. Maybe, after a few years, it would even become bearable.

"Decided," he says. "Kill me."

"As you like," Keln says with a twisted smile. "Only, I'm afraid you don't get to choose _when._"


	87. Hero's Journey

Note: My two latest reviews (one was a flame and has been deleted) would seem to indicate that the story has become a bit monotonous. The torture scenes aren't much fun to write. They tend to put me in a weird mood. I've included so many in the belief that they made the story more vivid. But since they apparently aren't much fun to read, either, I will see what I can do to make any further torture implied rather than described.

Note2: I don't know when the next chapter will be up. I had something ready (having to do with Effie) but I don't think I will keep it. Frankly, I may abandon this story at any time. Currently I'm still writing it, but inspiration for this one doesn't come nearly as often as it used to. My gravest concern is that I may be running it into the ground by pushing myself to write more when I'm not feeling it. I'll keep going as long as it's enjoyable for me and I feel that I have something really worthwhile to add.

I like this one, though, so: here 'tis.

**Capitol Nights, chapter 87**

Katniss has been walking for four days now, traveling east, knowing she must eventually come to something in that direction. She's hoping for train tracks. Then she'll follow those. She might have to stow away on a train, if she can.

She has no way of knowing how far she'll have to walk to find the tracks. It could easily be a hundred miles, or two hundred. Damn them for not caring enough to rescue Peeta. As usual, she is on her own. Cowards.

The forest has been thick around her since she set out, the way shadowy even at noon and too pitch black at night to travel at all. It's cold. She has the gun but she doesn't dare fire it, not when she doesn't know how close she may be to other people. If anyone else heard the shots they'd come after her.

Other than that, she has only her gray jumpsuit and the gray jacket she'd been issued for her walk four days ago. Early this morning she'd improvised a snare out of vines and branches, but she hadn't had much hope for it. It's too cold for lizards, and she doesn't have time to wait around for the much more cautious rabbits. With no knife, she hasn't a chance of fashioning a bow. After a cold and frustrating hour of sitting in a tree some distance off, she'd climbed down and destroyed the useless snare so no one could use it to track her.

She's not making very good time between the cold and the hunger and the uneven terrain. And she can never push the count out of her mind. This makes twenty days that Peeta's been in the Capitol dungeons. If he's still alive.

It's starting to get really dark again, the end of day four approaching. Katniss glares into the deepening shadows, daring anything in these woods to menace her. Then she checks her direction by the moss on the tree trunks and breaks into a run. She can make another mile before she stops for the night.

She hears something crashing through the trees behind her, close at her heels, and she pushes herself faster. There are howls and screams in the distance. Peeta crashes along behind her, struggling to keep up, struggling to run at all. Katniss skids to a stop and spins around to grab him, her chest heaving as her terrified eyes scan the darkness. They'll have to climb. The huge dog-like beasts are almost upon them, and Peeta can't outrun them with his leg.

"Peeta!" she cries out to the trees. "Hurry up! Peeta?" Oh no, oh shit, where is he?

All sounds have ceased, the screams and howls cut off abruptly, and she hears no movement. Katniss holds her breath, straining her ears for anything that might tell her the location of the mutts or of Peeta. Mutts usually stop after they kill one or two Tributes. They stop and wander off, losing all interest in the prey they were so wild to catch. Couldn't let them slaughter half a dozen at a time or the Games would end too quickly. So, if they're gone, and Peeta's gone…

"_Peeta_!" she screams, and sets off at a dead run in the direction she just came from, the last place she heard his voice.

Katniss runs face first into a broad tree trunk and falls back with her lip bleeding and her head throbbing from the impact. But it also knocks her out of the flashback. She slowly draws her knees up to her chest and hugs them, blinking back tears and shaking her head. Fuck, it's cold. She's never had one that lasted that long before. And isn't this just a lovely time for a nervous breakdown.

Once she stops shaking she stands and begins to climb the tree she'd run into, going by feel. If there are no branches thick enough to hold her she'll have to descend by feel, and that'll be even more risky. But judging by the size of the trunk, she figures it'll do.

She finds an upward slanting limb with a couple of others at different angles around it and settles herself as securely as she can. Her stomach growls. If she can't find something substantial to eat tomorrow, she'll have to start sleeping on the ground to guard against the light-headedness. And if she doesn't find something within the next few days…

She'd made it six days without eating once. And she'd been chronically malnourished back then. She'll keep going as long as it takes. There is no one else.

Stiff and cold and already feeling weak, Katniss carefully descends to the ground as early daylight filters through the canopy. If she sees a deer or a turkey, something big, she'll shoot it. Eat as much as she can and then run. Or walk quickly, she corrects herself with a humorless smile. She's not confident enough with the gun, or desperate enough, to try for a rabbit or a squirrel, not with only five bullets left.

Her feet touch the ground, and she almost steps on the turtle. It has no business being there at the bottom of the tree in the near-freezing air. Katniss picks it up, wondering how she's supposed to do this. She tries to pry the shell apart, but she can't get her fingers into the tightly shut apertures. Setting it down, she casts around for a rock.

"Sorry," she says quietly, crouching down beside it. No quick way to kill it, not that she can see. But dug up roots and acorns aren't going to keep her much longer. She has to. Katniss hefts the rock and reminds herself that she's done so much worse. What does a turtle matter?

She brings the rock down, hammering the ancient mosaic pattern with its butterfly oranges and blacks. The shell doesn't open, and much to her relief the turtle makes no sound. She had half expected it to shriek in the manner of any animal being killed. Or to scream.

It takes three blows to crack the shell and then she pulls it apart quickly, eager for the few bites of meat. Inside, the reptile is still very much alive. It writhes, pushing its head and legs out as though it could still crawl away. Wincing, Katniss scoops it up in one hand and tweezes its neck between two fingers. She bites the turtle's head off, grinding her teeth on the tough tissue and tearing at it. Spitting the head out onto the dead leaves, she begins rapidly scraping out the rest of the turtle and putting the bloody pieces in her mouth, swallowing quickly and eating more before the taste can overwhelm her. She's never had raw meat before, not even in the Arena.

Too soon the last shreds of meat are gone. Still hungry, ravenous, she cracks open each thin bone to suck out whatever marrow can be found. Then she looks at the discarded head. Deep breath. _It's food. Just do it_.

Katniss tosses the head into her mouth and swallows it whole. Then she gets up and begins to walk again, shivering.

Only an hour later she hears the train. Katniss creeps forward until she can see the tracks. The cars are already moving by her, the line of them stretching back until it's lost to sight among the trees. The front end is already out of sight.

It must be now. If they see her running toward the train they'll shoot her. If they recognize her, they'll take her to the Capitol dungeons and torture her. If she waits for the train to pass and tries to just follow the tracks she might walk another four days. That would make twenty-four days for Peeta. So she sprints for the train, not bothering with cover, just running flat out, watching the cars go by, faster than she can run, too fast.

Turning and running alongside, almost deafened by the noise, dizzy with the physical exertion after four days of starvation, Katniss focuses on the hand rail at the back corner of one of the cars and puts everything she has left into her leap.

Her body slams against the wall of the car, one hand wrapped around the rail as she's dragged along with her feet kicking high above the gravel and the wood. Katniss tries desperately to hold onto her tenuous grip. She will not let go. She will not slip away. She's the only one there is.

But with the wind it's painfully cold. Her hand is going numb, and she can't grip it any tighter. With a strangled cry that's mostly made of fury Katniss struggles to pull herself up, tries to find some place to plant her feet. One foot kicks the side of the train hard enough to knock loose the nail on her great toe, and Katniss realizes she's lost at least one boot.

"There's someone out here!" a male voice shouts, and Katniss looks up into the surprised face of a Peacekeeper. She opens her hand and feels herself sail through the air. Curling up instinctively, she hits the ground rolling. Stumbling, scrabbling, aware of a sharp pain in her side, Katniss makes it to her feet as the train starts to slow behind her. Both of her boots are gone, and she spies one laying a scant ten feet away but doesn't dare take the time to get it.

"Halt!" an amplified voice commands.

Like hell. Katniss runs as best she can, sharp twigs puncturing her feet through the socks that rapidly become mud-logged.

"Halt!"

She risks a glance behind her and sees four of them already entering the trees not thirty feet back. They must have jumped off even as the train was beginning to slow. Shit. Should have followed the tracks. If they catch her, there'll be no one left to save Peeta. He'll die while those cursed cowards in 13 sit back and tell each other there was nothing they could have done.

She can't lose Peeta, too.

Maybe they haven't recognized her yet. If she can keep running and keep ahead of them, maybe they'll write her off and go back to their train.

She slaloms through the trees, trying to lose them. No time to climb a tree and hide. They're too close. If she tries to go to ground, they'll see her and they'll drag her out like an injured rabbit from the undergrowth. She can hear something chasing her now less than twenty feet back, but whether it's the flesh-and-blood men in white or a beast of mist and twisted memory she can't tell. She's hungry and cold and scared, and running is an invitation to flashbacks even when she's none of those things. Even if they're not that close yet, they're back there.

The gun in her jacket pocket thumps against her hip and Katniss suddenly remembers that she can hurt them. For the first time in her life, she can make them sorry they came after her and hers. She has five bullets left. Four of them chasing her.

She looks back and the closest of them is only ten feet away, running along at a steady pace, arms pumping at his sides, eyes fixed on her. And she realized that they could run forever relative to her dwindling reserves and they'll never let her get away.

Still running she shoves her hand into her pocket, wraps her hand around the grip and flips the safety off, being careful not to touch the trigger. Stop, spin, draw. Fire.

The Peacekeeper doesn't stop. He's almost within arm's reach of their quarry now, and he can see it's a young woman with dark hair tied in a braid, and she's exhausted. She's slowing, her subconscious acknowledging the hopelessness of her flight. Any second now she'll stumble and fall or just stop and wait in dazed terror.

He sees her raise the gun and aim it point-blank, but the image doesn't have time to register as an actual reality_. Gun_, he notes, running forward to knock her to the ground and subdue her. Then Katniss's bullet smashes into his brain, countering his momentum so that the body falls right at her feet.

The others are almost as close as the leader was, and Katniss kills another one before he can even draw his weapon. Then the first return shot hits her right shoulder. The gun falls to the ground. Katniss doesn't scream. She draws in her breath and squeezes her eyes shut tightly, her left hand going to the wound. She can feel her legs trembling as her knees get ready to buckle. She locks them and forces her eyes open to see the two remaining Peacekeepers walking slowly forward with guns drawn.

"Down!" one of them barks at her. "On your knees! Hands behind your head!"

Katniss raises her left hand in surrender and sinks to her knees, watching them approach through pain-narrowed eyes. It's possible they still don't recognize her. Bonnie Caspian, she decides at random. From District 6.

Then she sees the gun laying there in the mud and without even thinking she twists and grabs it left-handed.

"Drop it! Drop it!"

"Take her alive! They want her live!"

Katniss pulls the trigger at the same time the blow lands on the side of her head, knocking her flat on her face. The weapon is torn from her hand and she screams as her arms are wrenched behind her and cuffs snap closed around her wrists.

Then one of them kicks her in the belly, kicks her hard with a boot capped in steel. "Little bitch! You just killed two Peacekeepers, you rabid little bitch! You have no idea of the shit in store for you."

Curled up, trying to get her breath back, Katniss looks up at the one who kicked her and memorizes his features, etching them in her mind with the pure acid of her hatred. She sits up, and her stare is the stare of a basilisk. "Day'll come you'll lose your foot for that, you shit," she says deliberately.

The other Peacekeeper has circled around behind her and he kicks her in the back. She hunches over for a moment with the pain of it. Then she straightens her spine and says," Do that again."

"Get her up," the one in front of her says. "Let's get her back to the train. We'll send out the attendants to get Leate and Young and get the train moving again within the next half hour. Then maybe we'll have some fun with Her Highness here before we deliver her to the Capitol." He looks back down at Katniss, who returns his look defiantly. "Where, if you're a lucky bitch as well as a crazy one, they'll just make you into an Avox instead of killing you."


End file.
